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Fediverse! I’ve been building a bridge to Bluesky, and they’re turning on federation soon, which means my bridge will be available soon too. You’ll be able to follow people on Bluesky from here in the fediverse, and vice versa.

Bluesky is a broad network with lots of worthwhile people and conversations! I hope you’ll give it a chance. Only fully public content is bridged, not followers-only or otherwise private posts or profiles. Still, if you want to opt out, I understand. Feel free to DM me at @snarfed@indieweb.social (different account than this one), email me, file a GitHub issue, or put #nobridge in your profile bio.

A number of us have thought about this for a while now, we’re committed to making it work well for everyone, and we’re very open to feedback. Thanks for listening. Feel free to share broadly.

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

@tchambers Holy moly "moderate people, not code" is so good. So many ideas I've wanted to express but you had the skill and knowledge to express them so much better than I'd have been able to!
in reply to Ryan Barrett

Pagan Plus will be blocking the blue sky bridge for automaticly opting unaware users into sharing and introducing the fediverse to bluesky's moderation problems.
in reply to :jan:‍:abreath:‍‍🌬:dandelion:

After reviewing the domain operated by the bridge creator, I have silanced the domain to discourage interaction with data scrapers
in reply to mimo

Looks like, yes! There are some details on his site: snarfed.org/2023-11-27_re-intr…

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

sure wish the number of you thinking about this for a while had thought long enough to make it opt in for those interested rather than opt out for those not interested.
in reply to DJ Sundog

@DJ Sundog - from the toot-lab @Ryan Barrett @Ryan Barrett The entire fediverse is opt-out.

If you'd like an opt-in fediverse I recommend finding or setting up a whitelist instance.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

I promise I know how the fediverse works. have a great life.

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in reply to DJ Sundog

@DJ Sundog - from the toot-lab @Ryan Barrett @Ryan Barrett clearly not if you are upset at a bridge offering an opt-out feature, as opposed to all the other bridges which don't. Or that you're upset at a bridge existing on the fediverse in general...
in reply to Shiri Bailem

we're not talking about the entire fediverse, we're talking about this bridge.

Please reread what you're replying to before you reply.

in reply to Cloudbreaker

I guess you want to use privacy settings on your posts then. This is all public by default here
in reply to Cloudbreaker

I don't know you, we're not connected in any way I know, and yet, I can see your post, and your profile and more.
How is that for your privacy?
in reply to Feliz Zatty-dad :meowybara:

I might be missing something, I don’t follow how this is different to the Fediverse today. Any new server can access & federate from any other, unless the user or the server blocks it (unless I’ve misunderstood!) Wouldn’t this be the same for fed.brid.gy? (But you can *also* use the hashtag in your profile)

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to JP

I think the main difference is that, like Nostr, Bluesky is just one big monolith with known problematic users (that have to be "filtered" out), so it's hard to moderate effectively. It's the same as any other large Mastodon instance, like dot Social or Gab.

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to Blake Leonard

Ahh yeah, I guess some users/servers might want/need to block the whole of brid.gy to avoid the risk of specific users on a given bridged platform being able to follow them. That’s not so different to today’s fediverse (lots of people/servers block Threads), but it sucks to lose the other functionality of brid.gy.

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to JP

(Unless you can block specific bridges platforms individually @snarfed.org ? This still seems within the limits of current Fediverse architecture to me, but it’d be a shame if we can’t allow people to select platforms by server, just like with the Fediverse!)

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to JP

@byjp@zatnosk@activitypubblueskybridge@fedidevs@fediversenews@snarfed@hachyderm.io If you want to block just Bridgy's Bluesky bridge, or just their (upcoming) Nostr bridge, or whatever, you can do that. If you want to block specific PDS's, I don't think there's a way to do that.
in reply to JP

The difference is that when you post to the Fediverse, you expect your post to be federated within the Fediverse via its native means. One consents to this type of content propagation when they make posts on Fedi.

Bridging is something beyond that, and is not something one consents to when making posts on the Fediverse.

Edit: Please stop boosting this, and check out the replies by much better-informed people!

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to eishiya

Yeah, that makes sense—I don’t expect my posts on StackOverflow to end up on some other random site (and it’s frustrating when they do!)
Is Threads much different though? They integrate using ActivityPub in the same way. I block that “server”, and Meta doesn’t (legally) get my data.
With both Threads & Bridgy you’re notified when you’re followed by someone from there, so there’s visibility, but bridgy needs exact username too. This feels okay to me, but I get it feels odd!
in reply to eishiya

@eishiya @JP you should know that Bluesky, once they start federating (which this is directly related to)... is the fediverse as well.

Please do not confuse Mastodon/ActivityPub with the whole fediverse. The fediverse is a wide array of servers and there are many bridges between different protocols out there already.

And on the topic of consent, this is a purely public system. Consent within the fediverse is opt out, when you post publically you are automatically consenting to anyone receiving and transmitting your post however they wish. If you do not wish to provide that consent, you make your post private.

Bridges are a natural part of federation and are key to it's survival as it makes all relevant platforms less likely to collapse.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

This is a good point, and I should know better than to conflate AP services with the whole Fediverse.

After I made that post, I did think about how this is different from federating with, say, Diaspora, which I personally don't have a problem with. I think the difference is that Bluesky is a corporate product that offers no reason to assume good faith. Same deal with Threads, which uses AP.

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in reply to eishiya

My problem isn't so much with federating with Bluesky, but with the opt-out mechanisms this bridge offers. They are all non-standard (not part of either protocol), with the exception of instance-level blocks. If user-level blocks (e.g. me personally blocking the bridge domain) works, then I'm less bothered, but AFAIK OP hasn't responded to that query.

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This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to eishiya

@eishiya You blocking the bridge domain will work just the same as blocking any other instance, they won't be able to answer that really because that occurs entirely on your server and not theirs (I don't believe there's any AP protocol for "Hey X user@domain has blocked you").

I do really like their approach to providing opt-out mechanisms specifically because not all platforms have user level domain blocking available. Especially as they're implicitly suggesting a standard with the nobridge hashtag in the bio as it would be a great universal way to request an opt-out of bridges by default if it became broadly accepted... though the backlash here might hurt that.

As far as the corporate aspect of it... yeah, all the corporate platforms are awful and I genuinely hate them. The only reason I'm in favor of bridges like this is because I dream of the fediverse becoming the norm, that corporations can be better dis-empowered by connecting than isolating (ie. they see that it's better over here, so choose to leave Bluesky for AP, and the bridge then makes that transition relatively painless for them, as opposed to the segmentation that happens with no bridge)

I've never once spoken out against people choosing for themselves whether to block an instance, only against the backlash efforts where people moralize over it (ie. considering blocking threads a moral imperative, or demanding that someone's passive bridge between open and public networks be opt-in instead of opt-out).

in reply to Shiri Bailem

I think hashtags are a poor mechanism. Bio space is often limited, and bios are intended to be read mainly by humans - people want them to look nice and not be full of hashtags like nobridge, noai, nobot, etc.

I think if there's no protocol-level opt-out possible, the next best thing would be to provide a low-spoon way to opt-out, such as via a form. "Contact me on socials or open an issue", however well-intentioned, comes off as requesting more effort than is reasonable for many folks.

in reply to eishiya

@eishiya something like a google docs form is not unreasonable, though I think the "contact me on socials" is easier so long as you don't have social anxiety lol

For reference though, the hashtag idea is mostly for the lack of protocol level options. This doesn't mean OP chose to not implement such options, but rather that such options just don't exist in the protocol. They had to write extra code to make the system parse your bio for that tag before allowing the content through the bridge, which I do consider to be very considerate.

in reply to eishiya

Bluesky is not a "corporate product"

Almost all of it is open source, in the exact same way that almost all of Mastodon is open source

Sure, there is a company behind it, and it operates all of its services at the moment. But there are also companies behind many Fediverse related projects and services, including Mastodon.

in reply to Daisy Doo & TuxieGirl Betty

@Stevie Cat, Daisy Dog & Betty @JP @eishiya for the hashtag to work you need to put it in your profile. When a Bluesky user tries to follow you through this bridge it'll check your profile and hide your account if you have that tag in your profile.
in reply to Daisy Doo & TuxieGirl Betty

@Stevie Cat, Daisy Dog & Betty So I guess you're one of those who have joined Mastodon in the second Twitter migration wave in November 2022, and who still "know" that the Fediverse is only Mastodon. Their nice and cosy and fluffy Mastodon.

Well, then I've got a very very uncomfortable and upsetting truth to reveal to you: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. It is more than just Mastodon.

There's a whole lot more stuff in the Fediverse, and all of it is connected to Mastodon just like Mastodon instances are connected to one another.

For example, there are dozens of other Twitter-like microblogging projects. Mastodon forks such as Glitch or Hometown. Pleroma. Pleroma forks such as Akkoma. Misskey. Dozens of Misskey forks such as Firefish, Iceshrimp, Sharkey, Catodon, Hajkey, Meisskey etc.

There are "Reddit clones" like Lemmy or /kbin.

There is the "Instagram clone" Pixelfed.

There is the YouTube stand-in PeerTube.

There is the Twitch stand-in Owncast.

There are the "Medium clones" WriteFreely and Plume.

There is the "Goodreads clone" BookWyrm.

There are the Facebook alternatives Friendica and (streams) as well as Hubzilla which goes well beyond being a Facebook alternative.

And a lot more.

All this is in the Fediverse, and all this is connected to Mastodon, whether you want or not. It's normal. It's intended. It's the very idea behind the Fediverse. And it has always been the idea behind the Fediverse.

Look at my mentions, how weird they look. Look at my hashtags, how weird they look. Look at this post and how it exceeds 500 characters. Look at my bold type. Look at my italics. All stuff that Mastodon can't do.

But how can I possibly do it if Mastodon can't do it?

Because I'm not on Mastodon. I'm on Hubzilla. Hubzilla is not a Mastodon instance. Hubzilla is not even a Mastodon fork. Hubzilla is developed completely independently from Mastodon. And Hubzilla is almost a year older than Mastodon. And yet, I can read what you've posted, and I can reply to you.

That's because Hubzilla is part of the Fediverse, just like Mastodon is. And it has always been.

CC: @Shiri Bailem @JP @eishiya

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Sharkey #Catodon #Hajkey #Meisskey #Lemmy #kbin #/kbin #Pixelfed #PeerTube #Owncast #WriteFreely #Plume #BookWyrm #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #NotOnlyMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #FediverseIsNotMastodon

in reply to Shiri Bailem

the main problem is bluesky is techbro startup capitalist prone to enshittification crap.
in reply to JP

The difference is it is a commercial network. We have not signed up to the TOS AND he is copying everything with out permission from the user.

We did sign up just to the fediverse, not to make content for a billionaire.

If people want to post elsewhere they can sign up for the TOS.

It needs to be OPT IN If people want to use it.

@zatnosk @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to SuperMoosie

Considering each instance can have its own terms of service, this is a legal space that is largely untested currently. My thoughts are that the legality will boil down to "follow each instance terms", but it's an amazingly complex thing even there. And I say this even as an instance owner who thinks that bridgy should be explicitly opt-in either per-post, per-user, or per-instance.

Per-instance, to me, kind of makes the MOST sense for having an 'opt-out' tag in the bio -- each instance owner is then making their own users aware of the policy and can give them advance notice if they don't wish to be included. Just having a global "we can have your information even if you're unaware of it" policy is half the problem of the current tech industry snarfing up damn everything as if it's theirs to use, causing all the LLM garbage issues today.

Hell, the fact I'd have to end my wifi SSID in _at least_ two weird tag things, and one of them MUST be the last one, to avoid my wifi SSID, BSSID, and location getting snarfed by mapping cars (google, MS, etc) is just part of this. I have to take up limited characters in my bio for each service I want no part in? I have to make my SSID ugly just so a corp won't use info I didn't consent to them using? While I like the idea of being able to follow friends of mine who are on AT instead of fedi, and refuse to use fedi, it's not worth it being so open; I always figured there would be an opt-in mechanism, not yet more opt-out stuff.

C'mon, @activitypubblueskybridge, haven't you seen how many times people offering only opt-out are shown the distaste for this? =/ 'bridge' or not, it's still technically a specialized service, it's not transparent just because things are duplicated both ways.

in reply to Kay Ohtie

@Kay Ohtie @SuperMoosie @JP @Zatty :meowybara: legal space is simple, TOS only applies to the service you're using. You're not using Bluesky, you're not using my instance.

For a TOS to apply you have to accept it in some fashion, most of these sites do this by either a passive "if you continue to use this site you implicitly accept the TOS" (and that can only reasonably apply while you're actively browsing the site, not for relayed fediverse messages) or a "to create an account you have to accept the TOS".

It's the same legal grounds as whether or not Yahoo's terms of service apply when I email someone who has a Yahoo account.

It's also a woefully flawed argument to assume that the loudest voices represent the majority. The majority don't care and the backlash just goes more to show the toxicity of Mastodon culture (and I mean Mastodon here, not ActivityPub)

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in reply to SuperMoosie

There are several commercial Fediverse networks that you have not opted into, but that your posts can be sent to (via boosts, replies, etc.). Please shut the fuck up and leave this developer alone. This is embarrassing.

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to SuperMoosie

I did not consent to the TOS of your instance and yet, it's copying this post so that you can see it. And guess what, you did not consent to the TOS of my server and yet, it has copied your post and basic info so that I can see them.
in reply to Feliz Zatty-dad :meowybara:

Indeed. There should be no bridge, and if there is a bridge, then requiring opt-out by people who have nevee heard of that bridge is the opposite of consent.
in reply to the roamer

This argument about consent is fictional. Anyone can create a server on the Fediverse and everyone on the Fediverse is conntected, without their consent.

Bluesky could create a Mastodon server, any commercial entity can create a server and everyone is linked without consent.

The only way to preserve consent on the Fediverse, is to create a server that is not linked to other servers, in which case you don't have to worry about this bridge.

in reply to Tim Erickson, @stpaultim

If you really believe in consent, then you should be advocating that no one is connected to any server other than the one they signed up for, unless they opt-in.
in reply to Tim Erickson, @stpaultim

The BS bridge links to a commercial platform outside the Fediverse, rather than to other instances within the Fediverse. People sign up to their Fediverse instance in order to be connected within the Fediverse. Some people in the Fediverse also want to be connected to commercial external platforms, but many very definitely don't. They joined the Fediverse precisely because they want to be free from those platforms. That's where the "opt-out" mechanism violates consent.

#consent

in reply to Tim Erickson, @stpaultim

With respect it is not at all like a commercial Mastodon server. A bridge contributes to a social media platform that's not (yet) proven its bona fides as regards being anti-monopolistic.
in reply to Ben Thompson 🐕

The developer has made clear that this bridge is only possible if Blue Sky turns on Federation and made clear it will be a two way bridge.

I'll leave it at that.
snarfed.org/2023-11-27_re-intr…

in reply to the roamer

Undecided on this but we had bridges / gateways to a lot of federated networks on the usenet and users did not consider this a problem with consent in principle. You don’t have to use it and your instance can block it.
However, blueky could easily become one of the too big to block instances on the fediverse, but with a different culture concerning moderation (and archiving), and that may become a problem.
in reply to chris@strafpla.net

@chris@strafpla.net @the roamer @Ryan Barrett @Zatty :meowybara: I don't think "Too Big To Block" is really an argument... If people don't want to talk to Bluesky users, they can block Bluesky. If Bluesky is so uncontrollably toxic as to create a critical problem, then why would you not block those posts?

The only time "Too Big To Block" really applies is the same time the people who aren't bothered by this... the people who prioritize getting as many people on the fediverse as possible to have as much reach as possible.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

Instances develop individual cultures, based on own sets of rules, enforcement, local law, and kind of users they attract.
Mastodon/Fedi #moderation scales well because individual instances that don’t fit the culture on another instance can be blocked, instead of individual users. This “moderation by proxy” fails when an instance becomes #TooBigToBlock because it would cut off coms with a too large number of users. It’s a problem of (re-)centralizing.
@the_roamer @snarfed.org @zatnosk
in reply to Feliz Zatty-dad :meowybara:

Please shut the fuck up.

Mastodon sends your posts to thousands of other servers without your consent. That is how ActivityPub works. This is doing absolutely nothing different.

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to Sam :verified:

I think, many Fediverse users trust on the moderation in the fediverse. Connecting to a network without a trusted moderation could be a problem?!
Bluesky isn't simply "another server"

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to Markus

you don't trust my servers moderation and yet somehow your dumb take js in my feed. curious.
in reply to Markus

I*m still on the fence about this, but if Bluesky suddenly bewcomes partly dependent o. Mastodon content, it may well force moderation … or I guess they'd be defederated. @sam @zatnosk @snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews
in reply to Shiri Bailem

Or possibly the other way around. Can’t imagine they’d do this without having the next few steps figured out.
in reply to Sam :verified:

I'm in agreement with your arguments. But, I'm fully against the tone and the aggressiveness of your responses.

It's nice that Mastodon has such nice features to block users such as yourself.

Your account is an opt-out account. No one was asked to consent to your hostility, it's just part of the network, however everyone has the option to block it (opt out).

I expect, I'll be taking advantage of that feature.

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

I'm a big fan of bridges and this is the big one I've been eagerly waiting for. I'll probably add it to my wizard soon after it's available. Once the moderation issues get sorted out, I firmly believe that in the end, this will be a net positive for both networks, since Bluesky users will be able to follow and engage with the vibrant and growing communities and services here, and we'll be able to follow and engage with shitposters from Bluesky.

The moderation issues should be sorted out promptly, and I'm a little disappointed that you're going to open it up with little consideration about mod tooling, especially considering the lists and lists of known problematic users on Bluesky, from mere crypto-shills and scammers to bigots, transphobes, racists, fascists, and genocide supporters. I don't have any way to find or use Bluesky's mod lists from here so there needs to be some other way.

Plus, I'm sure Bluesky users want a way to mass-mute and mass-block bridged users, maybe even from particular instances, especially considering our ongoing tone police and reply guy problems, which have driven numerous people from here to there. I feel like this part is imminently solvable with automatically-populated moderation list(s), though.

in reply to Blake Leonard

Where have we signed up for the bluesky TOS?

What gives this guy the right to copy our content we make for the fediverse available on a commercial network?

No one has consented for this.

Bridges need to be opt in.

@fediversenews @fedidevs @activitypubblueskybridge @snarfed.org @snarfed

in reply to SuperMoosie

@SuperMoosie @Ryan Barrett @Ryan Barrett @Blake Leonard to be clear, where have you signed up for my server's TOS? And I don't mean that just to be silly, it's very explicitly how the legal take works here.

You can not apply your TOS to outside users and they can't apply their TOS to you. If you take issue with it you can block the instance.

And as far as "Bridges should be opt in" that ship passed decades ago, bridges aren't remotely new, this is just probably the first you've noticed.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

Opt-in only, or I #DomainBlock

What is that again?

bsky.brid.gy?

So noted...

I want *nothing* to do with #Bluesky

#NoBridge has been added to my profile

cc @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews@venera.social

in reply to Ryan Barrett

@activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews "Moderate people, not code"

You do not have the resources to moderate everything that will flow over this bridge, so you shouldn't do it. Your project will force this work on other instance mods.

Opt-out is unethical because people aren't aware they're being opted-in, but also because it makes this bigger and dumps more work on other instances.

in reply to unlofl [Promoted Toot]

honestly, we probably need another project like #fedipact to track things like this. I don't want to keep an eye out for every scraper/indexer/bridge project, I just want to pick an instance where my admins defed and opt everyone out. As a bonus, this would place pressure on projects to be opt-in only, so they don't get blocked on sight by whole communities.
in reply to unlofl [Promoted Toot]

@unlofl [Promoted Toot] @Ryan Barrett That's literally a whitelist server, you join a server that only federates with pre-approved servers.

That's the only functional way if you want to pro-actively avoid being accessible from all bridges. Though to be honest you can also just pay attention to the usernames of whomever follows you to see if it's a bridge account, not like it's hard to spot randomuser:bluesky@instance

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

please, make your tool opt-out by default. and learn about the concept of consent. opt-in by default is never acceptable.
in reply to Fairytale Loyola — بنت الليل

youre correct, but you mean the opposite words. opt-out is what is described in the post and is unacceptable
in reply to Toa :fumo_cirno:

@Toatrika, Witch of Numbers 🏆 @Kaknäsin Thorne @Ryan Barrett y'all could also learn to use the concept of consent with public speech... get over yourselves, you consented by posting publicly. If you don't understand that then you need a primer in what the fediverse is and how it actually works...

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

honestly fuck you. Do you really expect everybody to have enough space in their bios to opt-out of your fucking bs? How many opt-out bs am I supposed to put there?

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in reply to Joshix


I'm happy to opt you out manually, as I mentioned, you don't have to change your bio.


honestly fuck you. Do you really expect everybody to have enough space in their bios to opt-out of your fucking bs? How many opt-out bs am I supposed to put there?

in reply to Ryan Barrett

@snarfed.org@fed.brid.gy I think you do not – or perhaps deliberately do not – understand the concept of “informed consent”. I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you have good intentions here. The road to hell is paved with those, and this is going to be another slab.

You are also assuming that people who do not want this will somehow be aware that this is happening, find your blog post (that nobody will ever read) and then realise they should put a hashtag in their bio to remove themselves. That’s not really an “opt-out” because how will anyone know this is happening? Even if a hundred people boost your primary post, that is only a small selection of all fediverse users, let alone instances that even know.

That means there is no way that any given user will even know they can opt-out of something that they do not even know is scraping them. How can you moderate user behaivour when you do not even know this is happening in the first place?

Especially since this means our posts will be on BlueSky, without any recourse for us to remove them from BlueSky because we do not have a consent agreement with BlueSky.

This is also highly illegal under the GDPR, which applies in the EEA and UK, which means you are breaking the law of 30+ nations at the same time. So not only are you just oblivious to the concept of “hey, I don’t like my posts being on BlueSky”, you are also oblivious to your legal requirements as a data handler.

in reply to Yast Xmas🎄 :agenderFlag: :transgenderFlag:

@New Yastendo 3DS XL :baba_baba_yaseen: :agenderFlag: :transgenderFlag: @Ryan Barrett consent comes from posting publicly on the fediverse and is easily revocable by blocking their bridge.

Additionally, the way bridges operate normal moderation tools continue to exist just fine. Users and instances can block the bridge easily from their end if they have any issues, the opt-out mechanism here really is just an extra courtesy that's largely unecessary.

As far as posts being "on Bluesky" it's really important to note that your post will be "on Bluesky" to the exact same extent that it is on my server. Bluesky promised ages ago to federate, just under their own protocol which they're releasing and subsequently federating to. This is not echoing posts onto the Bluesky server (that's explicitly not a bridge, that's a mirror account), as a bridge all it's doing is translating requests between ActivityPub and AT (their protocol).

Additionally GDPR only applies within compliant countries (OP is in the US), this could theoretically apply if someone were to run their own copy of this in a GDPR compliant country, but it would also apply similarly to many other ActivityPub functions and activities (is every server using a relay in violation of the GDPR because it's a nearly identical process on a technical level?)

pavo reshared this.

in reply to Joshix

@Joshix 🦣 @Ryan Barrett ... notice that they didn't make that the only option, just a passive option that doesn't involve sending a special request. Just ping them a message with "I'd like to opt out of your bridge", done.

Or if you don't want to interact with them, lookup how to block a domain in mastodon and you'll be covered even better.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

@activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews I am excited for this, thank you for the time and effort you're putting into building this ActivityPub <> ATproto bridge, especially the two-way communication support! I have had very poor experiences with BlueSky myself, but I have multiple friends that prefer it and just aren't interested in Fedi. It will be amazing to be able to rebuild that part of my social circle and keep tabs with them, while still being able to utilize the filtering and timeline curation tools that only Mastodon provides right now.
in reply to Noxy 🐾

as always, a solution at the expense of user's time; it should be #bridgeToBsky, not the other way around
in reply to Noxy 🐾

The Fediverse is already made up of literally dozens of various services that all speak the same protocol - Mastodon, Firefish, Pixelfed, Pleroma, Frendica, among many others - and users on one service can freely interact with users on another service. Personally I don't see this bridge as being anything different, really. I have essentially zero issue with a public post of mine being visible to any and all - that's the whole point of a public post on the open web, imo. As long as they hold true to their word that non-public posts won't be viewable via the bridge, I have no issues with it.
in reply to Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲

"I have essentially zero issue with a public post of mine being visible to any and all"

YOU speak for only YOU. Yet you seem happy to subject others to your comfort zone.

Do you not see why that's a significant problem?

in reply to Pusher Of Pixels (old account)

Honestly no, I don't. First of all, I was only talking about my own preferences in that regard. If I post something with full public visibility, I have zero expectation of privacy on that post. But that said, a public post is a public post. Any time you make a public post on Fedi, that post is copied to other instances and other services through federation in order for others to view it. This is entirely by design. If you do not wish a post to be seen by any random user on the Fediverse, you are empowered with multiple ways to make that happen - be it blocking the user, blocking their instance, or adjusting your account or post privacy settings. According to the documentation (fed.brid.gy/docs) for the bridge, it's intended to work the same way, with the same restrictions - posts would not get picked up by the bridge until someone follows you, you would receive notifications any time someone followed you (there are NO anonymous follows), and you can block that user from following you just as if they were a native Fedi user. If the post or account is not public, then the bridge won't even know the post exists to do anything with it.
in reply to Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲

So you're supposition is people can choose how widely seen their content is?

That's kinda ironic considering this is entirely without choice for the vast majority who won't even know about it.

OptOut is a terrible idea on every angle.

in reply to Pusher Of Pixels (old account)

@AS4gBPS9axYI2RYbEe.snarfed.org@snarfed.org Opt-out is the default of the Fediverse. As a server admin, I don’t actively choose who federates with me. Federation happens as soon as my server “sees” another.

There is a way to change this default towards opt-in, and that’s by whitelisting. Most servers, including universeodon.com, don’t choose to go this route because it severely affects their visibility.

Another problem is that, even if you whitelist, once your content federates onto another server, it is beyond your control. It exists elsewhere. A malicious party who is on another server may interact with it in a distasteful, insensitive, perhaps illegal manner.

The way some servers have gotten around this is by turning off federation entirely. That is an option, but probably not one that most people on the Fediverse want.

in reply to Chris Trottier

Yes indeed, Thanks for making that clarification for all of the clueless people posting here who hitherto believed otherwise, as if they ever had it that way.

They'll complain and threaten to go somewhere else, and of course, they're welcome to that option as well, but in the end...

"“Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

#tallship #FOSS #Fediverse #bridges #innovation #fools

⛵️

.

in reply to Pusher Of Pixels (old account)

uh yeah, that's the whole point. This bridge acts just like a regular Fedi user and follows all the same rules. If the bridge can't see your posts, it can't do anything with them - and you have full control over how visible your posts are. You also have the option of adding a hashtag to your profile, defederating from the domain the bridge lives on, or contacting the dev for a manual opt-out.

Plus, as far as I can tell, absolutely none of this is intended to happen in a vacuum. The documentation I linked earlier explains that users who are followed via the bridge still get a notification that they were followed, just like they were followed by a regular Fedi account. You'll see the BlueSky user names of each user that follows you through the bridge, and you'll be able to block individual users from seeing your account through the bridge if you so choose (in addition to the options above).

You'll have the same control over who can see your content that you would with any other Fedi user.

I'd strongly recommend reading the documentation to get a better understanding of how this is intended to work when it goes live.

in reply to 🎄 lily 🏳️‍⚧️ :flag_pansexual: :flag_ace: θΔ ⋐ & ∞

Do you think that people who don’t know about the bridge would give a fsck about it - taking into account that their public posts are visible on instances of lemmy, friendica, pleroma,… and they don’t know about it?
Isn’t the way this bridge to bluesky is implemented exactly the way that another service on the fedi should be implemented?
Is it because bluesky is a commercial instance?

@pixelpusher220 @baralheia @noxypaws @snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

in reply to chris@strafpla.net

no, their posts are just visible on other fedi instances. that's how fedi works. obviously they're fine with that, or they wouldn't have signed up to fedi. no, the bridge to bluesky isn't implemented in the same way, because bluesky doesn't use activitypub, therefore is not part of the fediverse. people's posts would be being mirrored to bluesky without their consent.
in reply to 🎄 lily 🏳️‍⚧️ :flag_pansexual: :flag_ace: θΔ ⋐ & ∞

So what’ the difference between the fedi
and bridged bluesky?
Just the protocol? What parts/variants?
If I ask those very angry posters in this thread, can they explain to me what activitypub is?
What about services that use OStatus? Are they fedi? And then most posts are accessible using rss and some are integrating this into their blogs.
Is wordpress an ok member of the fediverse?

@pixelpusher220 @baralheia @noxypaws @snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

in reply to chris@strafpla.net

And if it is the protocol -
where does it have to be implemented? Can a service use a different protocol for internal communication and communicate to external instances using AP? Can this part run as a separate server? What’s the difference to a bridge?
No, this drama is not about the protocol.
“The Fedi” means something(s) else and we need to understand this to solve the drama.
@pixelpusher220 @baralheia @noxypaws @snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews
in reply to Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲

Here's a thought... While it's not a concern for me, I'm seeing a lot of worry from others about opt-in consent for this bridge. Could you consider (either by option or by default) having the bridge send newly-followed users a message through their service saying, basically, "this is an automatic message from Bridgy Fed. <User> wants to follow you from <service> via this bridge. Do you want to allow this?" and offer always, yes, no, and full opt-out options in response. The user who initiated the follow request wouldn't see anything until the newly-followed user responded, and no response would equal a "no" answer. Could something like that be doable?
in reply to Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲

@Baral'heia Stormdancer🔜 AnEx @Ryan Barrett that's pretty much already native with how a bridge works.

When a Bluesky user goes to follow you, you'll get a follow request from that user:instance@bridge (or similiar format username).

A lot of the confusion and freak out comes from people (a) not knowing how bridges work and (b) taking vague offense because they don't like Bluesky and think that the whole fediverse should conform to their personal standards

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

You misunderstand me - I'm well aware of how follows work on Fedi. What I'm suggesting is that there be an additional active consent prompt via DM specifically for the Bridgy Fed bridge when someone follows you through the bridge - the idea being since BlueSky is an external service and not part of the Fediverse, this not only informs users that Bridgy Fed is a thing and gives them control over whether or not they will allow their posts to be bridged over to BlueSky independent of their normal Fedi follow settings.

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in reply to Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲

@Baral'heia Stormdancer🔜 AnEx @Ryan Barrett wouldn't really be possible because they couldn't know to send it until some action had already been taken on your account over the bridge. Let alone the fact that it would be incredibly spammy and still be an opt-out system.

It's important to note that Bridges have existed for decades, a lot longer than ActivityPub has been a thing (and a lot of people don't realize there are other fediverse protocols, let alone older ones...), probably longer than I've been a thing.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

it's perfectly possible. Imagine this scenario: a BlueSky user finds and follows a Mastodon user through the bridge. The bridge receives the incoming follow activity from BlueSky and sends a direct message like the one I mentioned before to the Mastodon user. Mastodon user replies with the correct keyword to accept the follow, at which point the bridge sends a follow activity to the Mastodon user (and if necessary sends an accept activity back to the BlueSky user - I'm not certain how that message flow works). The rest of the message bridge process would be unchanged from this point, once the follow relationship is established.
in reply to Baral'heia Stormdancer ΘΔ🐲

@Baral'heia Stormdancer 🔜 TFF @Ryan Barrett how would it get the follow activity without already bridging the profile? That's the part you're missing.

And again, it's a massively burdensome process that is a wild departure from federation standards, both in following and in how bridges operate.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

I'm not a developer so I honestly don't know the exact action behind how that initial account discovery happens. My previous experience with these sorts of bridges was with bird.makeup, and you had to know the exact name of the account you were looking for from Twitter. You'd then add "@bird.makeup" to the end of it (example: @/nwsnorman@bird.makeup) and search for that to find the account to follow on Fedi. If nobody followed that handle, it was just an empty placeholder - and when you followed it, only then it would start forwarding posts over. If I've read the docs correctly it seems like Bridgy is intended to work on a similar basis.
in reply to Ryan Barrett

@activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews I hope your creepy non-consensual fucking project gets defederated from every instance and your shitty fucking bridge becomes completely fucking useless

Cătă doesn't like this.

in reply to hazelnot :yell:

@hazelnot :yell: @Ryan Barrett reporting you to your server admins for violating rule 7 on your server...

Bridges are a dime a dozen (literally there are so many out there already and this is open source so good luck de-federating them all without just joining a whitelist server), the fediverse doesn't work the way you think it does, bridges probably don't work the way you think they do, and dogpiling on someone for sharing their project for feedback, especially for offering a polite feature to exclude yourself from the bridge which no other bridge I've seen offers just makes it clear you're an asshole.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

This is increasingly how I'm inclined to treat these crybullies. Ryan's doing really important work to move the Fediverse forward and these are people who just get off on abusing strangers online. They'll never be satisfied.

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in reply to Evan Minto

@Evan Minto most of them are convinced that Mastodon is the entire fediverse and that their experience of it is the "one-true-fedi"
in reply to hazelnot :yell:

@hazelnot :yell: I don't get why people get angry over a freakin' bridge, yet they have no issue with the existence of projects like #BirdsiteLIVE. This is just so entitled. If you don't want to have your content available live on every place, just post it with a different privacy option smh

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in reply to Cătă

techbros understand consent challenge (impossible)

Cătă doesn't like this.

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in reply to hazelnot :yell:

@hazelnot :yell: you give consent when you publicly post something online. In fact, guess what, I can see your profile and whatever you publicly post without even logging in to your instance. How? I use a web browser.

Did you also give your consent to an obscure 3rd party app to display your content inside it? No. Let's just ban them all then, just like Xitter and Reddshit did, or like Meta/Faceshit did in the 1st place.

Oh, it's so great when we have stuff to help us reach content, from friends, from people we follow, but God forbid someone else reaches our content from other parts of the internet. Those that want that are just techbros.

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

Opt-out violates consent. Peter posts on the Fediverse, so that his friends on another Fedi instance can read his daily thoughts. He knows that there are many other people on the Fedi who can also see his posts. He is OK with that; indeed, he hopes for a wider Fedi audience. But he hates all commercial platforms, including BS. He wants his posts hidden from BS. Regardless, your bridge links Peter's posts into BS, against his wishes and without his knowledge. Don't!
in reply to Ryan Barrett

@activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

So,
if me or other trans* individuals, or other marginalized groups (many of whom I'm sure will *never* see your post with the genuinely shit opt-out option) are harassed or otherwise receive uninvited abuse and commentary through your bridge, are you prepared to face legal challenges brought against you?

in reply to Ryan Barrett

Cool! Looks interesting, sucks you are getting some piss poor negative feedback but the Fediverse does like to hurt itself pretty bad with stuff like this. I hope everything goes smoothly. Don't take the fedi mob seriously.
in reply to Ryan Barrett

i don't want anything to do with this and i'm not putting some shit in my profile to help enable your weird "just opt out!" philosophy
in reply to Ryan Barrett

thanks for the heads-up! Blocked the domain on the server level. Centralized corporate social media always goes to shit, so it's nice to block it out from day 1.
in reply to Ryan Barrett

@activitypubblueskybridge

Making this on an opt-out basis was a horrible, horrible decision. Please opt me out, and never, ever, include me in any future bridges.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

@activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

Such a service should be opt-in only, for the handful of folks who DO want their content used to generate traffic for Bluesky.

As I'm not one of those people, I am notifying you that I am opting out. It'd be nice if that request was honored, but realistically I know it won't be.

So fuck you.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

So,
if me or other trans* individuals, or other marginalized groups (many of whom I'm sure will *never* see your post with the genuinely shit opt-out option) are harassed or otherwise receive uninvited abuse and commentary through your bridge, are you prepared to face legal challenges brought against you?
in reply to Jess

@Jess @Ryan Barrett as a fellow trans* individual: you're either probably not familiar with how bridges work or you are not using safe practices and taking things for granted.

There are already many bridges on ActivityPub to much worse parts of the fediverse and they're not making waves (if you think Bluesky is bad, you should see Nostr). If they start harassing a user you treat it exactly the same as you would someone showing up to harass you from a new Neo-Nazi Mastodon instance, you can either block the user or block the whole bridge (only downside of a bridge is that you can't really block by individual server on the other side, it's either block individual users or the whole bridge).

This also has absolutely no threat of legal challenges to go along with it, it falls under numerous legal protections. Let alone the argument will absolutely fall apart in court that someone would complain about easily blockable abuse on a public post.

In case you're not aware, because it seems a lot of people think a bridge is some sort of web-scraper... it's a translator between protocols. It's not scraping your profile and copying posts, it's translating ActivityPub requests to Bluesky requests and back.

in reply to Johannes Hentschel

@Johannes Hentschel @Ryan Barrett If you take issue with your post being federated then you really should note that you've opted in already by posting publicly and on a non-whitelist server.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

OK it's good that you're going around explaining to people what a bridge is but I don't see a lot effort on your side to understand the deeper implications that people associate with bsky, the ones that sets it apart from "worse bridges". As a privacy advocate you must have come across people who take issue with their friends storing photos of them on gPhotos? That's the spirit. Yes, a bridge translates: we eschew what follows after.
@snarfed.org

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in reply to Johannes Hentschel

@Johannes Hentschel @Ryan Barrett oh I know full well, I'm deeply conscious of the bounds of my privacy, both what is under my control and what isn't.

I'm tired of the ideological purism present on the fediverse, especially from the Mastodon users who think they own the place and that their clique's reflect not only the norms, but the reality of how the world works.

If you care about the privacy to that extent, then you should be making your posts private to begin with, full stop. I recognize the difference between concerns and paranoia, it's why I've told many people throughout the thread that if they really mean what they say they should find a whitelist server.

People assume my cavalier attitude means I don't care about privacy or security... it doesn't come from not caring, it comes from being explicitly conscious of the decisions I've made regarding each. The fear comes from people who want others to accommodate their fear while they do nothing.

in reply to :PUA: Shlee fucked around and

eh ... as with Threads + fedipact, there's likely a spectrum where the louder voices can mask the "middle of the road" voices, for better or worse. Anti-Bridge-Pact?

What exactly is the difference between this and a new instance? I'm genuinely unclear?

Like, do kbin instances respect search indexing preferences? What about other commercial instances like moth?

Is it the relative size of bksy?

in reply to maegul

Agreed. I just want to actually interact with people I actually know on other platforms from the comfort of Mastodon. I miss people I actually know in real life.
in reply to James Harris

Yea, for me, the whole "I want a relatively anti-social social media" motive of many on masto seems like something that requires better institutional/infrastructural devices rather than merely distributing it amongst defed, personal blocks and outcries over opt-in/opt-out.

At some point, it seems, some people just want a different system than what this is. Like a closed FOSS Discord.

in reply to maegul

Which, TBC, is all good by me.

It's just that the amount of noise and "drama" necessary to maintain this constant vigilance against what a decentralised social media protocol naturally allows seems like a potential dead end with diminishing returns.

EG, many on bsky that those here would like to talk to have probably left here because of this "noise" however much they align with the values here.

in reply to maegul

@maegul @:PUA: Shlee fucked around and @Ryan Barrett @James Harris I've seen this for a while, many people on here are highly xenophobic. They found a place for themselves and they now want to close the gates on anyone else joining, seeing "foreigners" (other platforms) as threats rather than a foundational part of how this service works.

On top of that, they often demand ideological purity... it's actually one of the reasons Twitter survives and people use other shitty platforms... because they hopped on here and found only hostility to any way in which their social norms differed from what people considered acceptable.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

See also the way some Mastodon users freak out when they first discover the Fediverse isn't only Mastodon.

I mean, look at Friendica and Hubzilla and (streams). All three aren't based on ActivityPub, and yet, they're connected to Mastodon. They have plugins which, technically, are "bridges" for single instances.

Yes, they count as part of what they connect to ActivityPub instead of being third-party, but they work just the same as BridgyFed: They connect something that's completely alien by Mastodon's standards with a different underlying protocol a vastly different culture to Mastodon. And they offer no opt-in for Mastodon users.

It is at this point that the Mastodon users should start questioning whether Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) are actually part of the Fediverse. And if they should be. After all, these there aren't harmless either. They're the sources of atrocities by Mastodon's standards ranging from "quote-tweets" with no chance for Mastodon users to stop them to the freaky stuff Hubzilla and (streams) do with their nomadic identity and Friendica being fully federated with Bluesky already now without even needing BridgyFed.

Oh, and to everyone else: @Shiri Bailem is on Friendica, and I'm on Hubzilla. Nice to see someone else chime in from the far end of the Fediverse.

CC: @maegul @:PUA: Shlee fucked around and @Ryan Barrett @James Harris

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Bluesky #Bridge #BlueskyBridge #BridgyFed

in reply to Shiri Bailem

I fear for mastodon on this front because its "safety culture" seems to have some aspects based on the idea of a vigilant social immune system response, which can make plenty of sense, but I fear breeds some problematically misinformed understandings and mindsets.

Say what you will about centralised social media, I'm not sure it's healthy for *everyone* to have a gun, run a militia and be constantly paranoid about border crossings.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to maegul

I just checked and Mastodon does have a whitelist mode instances can use of they really want control over their data.

"This mode is intended for private use only, such as in academic institutions or internal company networks, as it effectively creates a data silo, which is contrary to Mastodon's mission of decentralization. This setting was known as WHITELIST_MODE prior to 3.1."

docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/co….

@jbwharris @shlee @snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

in reply to Ryan Barrett

@activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews A lot of people are upset about this but ya'll know, straight up, if your feed is live & people not auth'd can read your server feed you *don't have privacy*. Mastodon and the fediverse in general never said anything about expectations of privacy.

Snarfed here could have been a bad actor and never told you anything and as far as I know it's in the clear.

If you don't like it, block the bridge and move on.

in reply to Shanie

“They could have been a bad actor and you would never know” does not seem to be a good point to make to convince people of bridging.
in reply to chris@strafpla.net

Lucky for you they gave admins an option of what you want done. Good actor.

A bad actor, for example, is likely already gathering your servers data and training it on a LLM as you have no power over THEIR server; you have *volunteered that data by federating*. Your ToS means nothing. Oops.

Someone truly worried about privacy would not be federating at all.

in reply to Shanie

At what point do privacy concerns interfere with basic functionality?
in reply to ACCOUNT MOVED

that’s extremely dependent on what kind of privacy violation, but privacy concerns interfere with basic functionality when the admin(s) of your instance get(s) lazy, really.

If you have active Admins and you can bring your concerns to their table, or they pay attention to #mastoadmin and do their due diligence, you will have a “safer” server.

in reply to Shanie

Unlike every other social media, you can just spin up your own instance and be your own admin. Unless you’re paying your admin, you have zero right to demand or expect anything from them and it’s on *you* as a user to whom this (or any other issue) is important to follow that stuff.

If you don’t agree with how your admin runs their instance, fire up your own

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in reply to ACCOUNT MOVED

I never said anything about “demanding” anything from anyone. If you have a shit admin though, or believe they are not healthy for you, yes, feel free to change servers. Only weakness is you “lose” your previous posts but whatever.

But if you are an admin and don’t at least sit and listen to your server, why are you an admin of social media?

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in reply to ACCOUNT MOVED

@dogzilla @chris@strafpla.net @Shanie basically always. You're either constantly consciously deciding what level of compromise you're willing to make or you're giving away your privacy and freaking out over nothing.

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in reply to 🎄 lily 🏳️‍⚧️ :flag_pansexual: :flag_ace: θΔ ⋐ & ∞

How to take a point and not at all understand what it means for $500, Alex.

It’s possible to do bad thing, so take control of your server and prevent it in an active way.

Unknown parent

SuperMoosie

There is no opt in.

He is sending all your posts across to a commercial site, with out anyones permission.

@snarfed.org @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

in reply to Ryan Barrett

@activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews This should be opt-in, not opt-out. BlueSky doesn't use ActivityPub and, therefore, the tools users have to protect themselves on Mastodon are incompatible with your bridge.

I'll be talking with the other moderators and admins of furry-focused servers to inform them of this new risk to marginalized users and I'm confident they'll be taking appropriate actions to keep our communities safe.

in reply to Kinky Kobolds

@Kinky Kobolds @Ryan Barrett The entire fediverse is opt-out structure by default.

If you want opt-in I recommend moving to or setting up a whitelist instance (an instance configured to only federate with instances added to the whitelist, meaning all instances are opt-in by your admin).

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

I know that public posting means it's readable to anyone on the Internet who finds it. But as long as it's on Mastodon, I still have controls to edit and remove things as necessary. My account being mirrored to another service without my consent removes the ability to control my content.

And besides, the right to reproduce a work belongs to a copyright holder. All it takes is one person who can afford to lawyer up and this becomes a prohibitively expensive lesson in copyright law.

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in reply to Kinky Kobolds

@Kinky Kobolds it's a bridge, so it'll try to reflect those edits across as well... but those edits are also security theater, you only have as much control as each user chooses to let you have (any number of instances may not support those features, or choose to disable them... and you'll immediately have no control).

And as far as copyright: that argument only holds up if you also believe you can also sue every instance in the fediverse for viewing your post.

On top of that even if applicable, Ryan is in the US and the DMCA applies. If you go to a lawyer they'll just write a letter to Ryan and he'll opt you out... you'll get a really expensive lesson in copyright law and he'll just get a really fancy and overly formal opt-out request. (DMCA protects sites like fediverse instances and bridges, you have to issue a take-down request first and then you can't sue until they ignore that take-down request... or in other words, they would have to ignore your opt-out request).

And that's before even getting to the fact that a bridge isn't a host, it's a translator. A lot of people don't understand how federation, let alone bridging works and think this is just scraping accounts and posting the content on bluesky...

in reply to Kinky Kobolds

@activitypubblueskybridge this is an excellent point. The bridge would effectively remove a significant layer of control that is inherent in the Fediverse and ActivityPub.

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in reply to Kinky Kobolds

I hear you on the distrust of BlueSky. I think it's also important to remember that a lot of these same issues apply to other Mastadon or ActivityPub servers as well.

Mastodon instances honor edits to posts as they want to present the most up-to-date information, but I could see easily imagine an instance presenting a history of edits; that's something we wouldn't really know unless we started looking around the internet.

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in reply to Miles

@Miles @Kinky Kobolds a history of edits is an explicit feature that some demand. Now I'm trying to remember if my server software supports that... would definitely turn it off if it was an optional feature regardless.

Edits are not security, I'd honor a delete but edits? pfft, show me the edit trail so people can't use it to gaslight.

in reply to Miles

i thought history was already visible though? The UI is s little clumsy, making it non-obvious, but I often refer to histories. Standard web client shows a clickable asterisk next to the age of the post, whereas clients like Tusky give a detailed diff of each update.

I seem to recall the history being a requirement of the edit feature, to avoid the entrapped endorsements risk (where a bad actor posts something innocuous to get likes from a prominent user, then edits to something controversial, so that they can claim endorsement from people who normally wouldn't)

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Allen Very Serious Versfeld

@uastronomer @cmiles74 Far as I know, the history is a built-in feature that cannot be turned off. And it's exactly for the kind gaslighting concern that @shiri raised.

Edit: Also, if you boost a post that is later edited, you'll also receive a notification that it was edited.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Ryan Barrett

you should not be setting this up as opt-out

I didn't consent to be part of your experiment, and if I wanted an account on some other network I'd have one

in reply to Ryan Barrett

Just want to say thank you for all your work on this! I'm on BlueSky as well but not comfortable with their VC backing. It's going to be nice to be able to interact with folks on there from my Mastodon account!
in reply to Ryan Barrett

build bridges not walls is great! being able to add #nobridge to individual profiles seems like a reasonable way for folks to opt out. Thanks for all your work!
in reply to Ryan Barrett

@activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews
This need to be opt *in*, not opt out! What the heck were you thinking? I suppose this makes sense if Bluesky is paying you...
in reply to chronohart

@chronohart @Ryan Barrett because this is the fediverse and people are getting upset that their public federated posts are... getting federated?

"Opt out" is basically just a nice gesture since not all platforms have user level instance blocking.

I've also seen a few people complaining who confuse a bridge with a webscraper and have no idea how a bridge works...

in reply to Shiri Bailem

There are several reasons people are complaining. One good reason I've seen is that this will expose users to a social media ecosystem that they *explicitly* chose to stay away from for their own personal safety. This would be kind of similar to someone creating a new system to forcibly connect your server to one that your admin already blocked due to its members constantly harassing folks on your server.

Just because you can't imagine this being a problem in your own life, that doesn't mean the problems other people have should be ignored.

You can tell the developer doesn't give a shit what people actually want because he stated, in almost these exact words, if people got the warning about this bridge that an opt in would provide, no one would want to use it. Or "my product will be so unlikable, the only way people will use it is if they don't know it's there".

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in reply to chronohart

@chronohart @Ryan Barrett the only reason I can't imagine it being a problem is because it's so completely manageable... if I get too much trouble over the bridge? I block the bridge.

Starts coming through over a different bridge? Another quick and easy block. And mind you that they have to find a bridge to harass me over and they get what... one harassing post before they have to go find another bridge? That's alot of extra work on their part as bridges aren't that plentiful.

That's before getting to the array of other moderation tools available, well before talking the tools available as a server admin.

On top of that, their opt out system is fantastic, just by a simple tag dropped in my profile block all bridges using this software? Hell yeah, that's a great measure and I hope it catches on elsewhere.

Altogether... I'm more worried about people already here than people accessing through a bridge. I think there are more self-righteous people here than any other platform.

reshared this

in reply to Shiri Bailem

@Ryan Barrett @chronohart you also mistake "loudest" for majority, much like the "fedipact" nonsense where a lot of people thought they had enough support to bully Facebook... They were absolutely a small minority of the fediverse, they weren't numerous... just loud.

Most of the people here? We just welcome more people to talk to and more ways out of corporate networks (and this is a way out of a corporate network).

in reply to Shiri Bailem

bridges that slurp content from the fediverse to bsky isn't getting people out of corporate networks... It's pulling people into one: bsky.
in reply to Shiri Bailem

so what does the bridge do? Just pretend it's passing content between the two?
in reply to Ubergeek

@Ubergeek @Ryan Barrett @chronohart it translates protocols, it means when a bluesky user wants to connect to ubergeek@tilde.zone they' try to to go to something like ubergeek_tilde.zone:ap.bridge, the request for the profile will be sent to the bridge which will translate the request to an AP request for a profile to tilde.zone. When tilde.zone replies the bridge will translate the AP profile format to the AT (bluesky's protocol) format for a profile. They'll then click follow, which will send an AT follow request to the bridge which will translate it to an AP follow request to tilde.zone and so on.
in reply to Shiri Bailem

so... It slurps content from one network, into another, without consent from at least one party, correct?

Because I never consented to being tracked by bsky and used in their LLM and advertising data...

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Ubergeek

The bridge connects folks on ActivityPub to Bluesky without their express consent. That the initial connection might be nothing more than a follow is immaterial. It is still a connection between ActivityPub and Bluesky that does not first seek consent from *both* parties for that connection to exist. And once a follow is made, the bridge will then pass actual posts between the two systems, yes? *Without the express consent of the ActivityPub user*.

@ubergeek @snarfed.org

in reply to Ubergeek

Then back to my usual suggestion of joining a whitelist instance or only post privately, you're already being fed into LLMs and advertising data from activitypub... and there's nothing you can do to stop that without going full whitelist.
in reply to Shiri Bailem

I don't think I *am* mistaking "loudest for majority", but that's beside the point. Even if a group of people are not a majority, you shouldn't be ignoring them when they say something is going to harm them.

If that was how we worked in this world, queer folks would still be systematically murdered by their governments in every country across the planet. We wouldn't be give a shit about the accessibility needs of the physically and mentally handicapped. Majority Rule was how the Holocaust happened. It's how Israel is mostly getting away with murdering Palestinians right now and why China committed genocide against the Uyghurs.

We don't govern by majority rule because considering what even the smallest group has to say generally improves conditions for everyone, inside and outside that group.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

If it's so fantastically easy to just drop a hashtag in your bio to block the bridge, why can't that method be used to *join* the bridge instead? We should be operating from a consent-first model. Folks already chose to avoid bluesky *by joining a network that isn't bluesky* and now this bridge is going to force them to actively reinforce that decision.

That's assuming they even know this bridge exists in the first place! As much discussion as there is about this thing right now, there are and always will be folks that don't know anything about the bridge in time to prevent it from touching them. This is going to be yet another complication that folks have to consider when they join the fediverse, which is already criticised for being very complicated for new users.

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in reply to chronohart

@chronohart @Ryan Barrett they're not being ignored, they're just living in an imaginary world.

Here's a simpler way to put it: if this makes anyone feel less safe, then the safety they felt was an ILLUSION, that safety was a lie. Shutting down this one developer doesn't bring back that safety, it just preserves the illusion.

The fediverse is and never was the place to avoid being "on" the other networks. The entire model of it is to be on everything.

If you want the features you claim are being violated you need to be on a whitelist server (a server configured to only federate with pre-approved other servers).

If you joined the fediverse to "not be on Bluesky" then you didn't remotely understand what you were joining. That's not a fault on this bridge, that's a fault on you and whomever might have told you otherwise.

The fediverse is not some enclave, it's not some isolated space, it never will be.

And the fediverse is not safe, never was meant to be a safe place and again never will be.

And why? Because the first and central premise of the entire fediverse is being open. It's safety is about always having an escape hatch... you're safer from horrible admins because you can always jump to another instance and more-or-less stay in touch with everyone... unlike the isolated networks of Twitter or Facebook where you can't move without losing connection to everyone.

And anyone who knows more anything about the history and point of federation knows that bridges are unavoidable and accepted either enthusiastically or reluctantly.

The whole situation here is that you're joining a space and getting upset at the people in that space for doing entirely normal things because you had ideas in your head about what that space was and those entirely normal things violated your imagined ideas.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

@Ryan Barrett @chronohart and like I've said many many many times throughout here, if you feel bridges violate your privacy, if you feel uncontrolled federation violates your security... that's explicitly what a whitelist server is for, either join or make one and then you'll have the control and isolation you want.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

Oh *FUCK* you. You do not get to tell people the harm they experienced and the safety they now have is *imaginary*. Wow. There's no help for you. We're done.

@snarfed.org

in reply to chronohart

@chronohart @Ryan Barrett I'm sure you've already blocked me, but if nothing else for other's sake:

I said nothing about calling harm imaginary, I just called the safety imaginary. That's not dismissing experiences, that's just pointing out that a person's experience to date doesn't mean they are safe.

This is how the fediverse works, and for good or ill, it's part and parcel of being here. I'm not tolerating people calling this harm just because the "harm" is the "perceived loss of security" a security that explicitly does not exist and never did.

A person picks up a revolver and puts it to their head thinking it's got now bullets in it... this situation is like disparaging someone for telling you that there is in fact 1 bullet in that revolver, so you keep pulling the trigger and telling people they're awful for telling you there's a bullet in the gun... all the way up until you find the bullet.

Like I said, if this makes someone feel less safe here, then you were never as safe as you believed yourself to be.

in reply to SuperMoosie

Mastodon works this way by default, it sends your posts to thousands of other servers without your permission. Please leave this developer alone.

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to Michael T. Richter

you have to appreciate someone so openly breaking their instance rules about proper conduct.

It makes it easier to report and block them.

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

Ryan,

How refreshing!

Another bridging mechanism to extend the reach and interoperability with other Fediverse protocols in the #DeSoc space is most welcome, and from the limited analysis I've been able to perform so far this is a novel approach to what some point in the future will find other Fediverse platforms incorporating in their network stacks.

So far, we've got seamless nostr interoperability to add to the other fine protocols such as Diaspora, ZOT, Nomad, OStatus, ActivityPub, and others in the mix. You might also wish to take a look at the repo for Minds to see how they've made seamless integration between the ActivityPub and nostr portions of the #Fediverse as well, and oh, pay no mind to the infantile and disparaging remarks that some small minded folks in this thread have exhibited - they are free to *defederate themselves from the Fediverse at any time.

We've been following withe some enthusiasm your project in the Fediverse-City community and it would be a pleasure to have you participate there. Your insight into the open and public aspects of Fediverse traffic in the #DeSoc world is a testament to the innovation and evolution that is possible in obviating the proprietary, privacy disrespecting, deprecated monolothic silo networks that have sowed so much acrimony and subjugation over the very people whom they seek to quantify as their business products.

You're performing a great service here, feel free to block any miscreants in this thread who don't understand the definition of public.

Also, might I suggest that instead of offering a `#nobridge keyword index, you think about offering a solution as a FEP here?:
codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/

There are a lot of Fediverse platform developers I'm sure that you'll find welcoming, encouraging, and willing to offer assistance in formulating solutions to silence the adolescent juvenile mindsets that have been berating you in this thread for your selfless commitment to the well being of us all.

In the future, the Fediverse that we perceive and interact within will become its own heterogeneous superset of networking protocols to facilitate effortless communications between individual parties regardless of which portions of the Fediverse and their associated protocols implemented. Just like #OStatus has been largely supplanted by ActivityPub, and #ZOT has been superseded by #Nomad, the ActivityPub portion of the Fediverse will also eventually be deprecated and replaced by other stacks that will emerge from the ether of creativity. In the meantime, we'll be bridging between the various protocol stacks, and Bridgy-fed is one of those tools that serves to make that a reality :)

Thank you again, for your selfless contribution to #DeSoc and the Fediverse. it's a fantastic achievement that will serve to benefit many in both the #ATP and #ActivityPub portions of the Fediverse!

#tallship #bridgy #FOSS #Fediverse #DeSoc #innovation

⛵️

.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

@Ryan Barrett @Ryan Barrett

I use Friendica. And friendica hast a bluesky-adapter built-in.
As admin i can activate it, and users can configure it for their needs...

So... instead of building such bridges it would be a great idea to build native support for different protocols in the services like mastodon, pleroma, *key...

Fill feature-requests to your projects to build a pressure-peergroup for your devs to demonstrate the need for.

For my part...
I left the commercial serviceproviders, when i discovered the fediverse. They are destroying the internet and they are also destroying democraties all over the world with their algorithms and monetarization of their users ...

This is evident. Free democratic countries do not need humanophobe tech-bros from silicon-valley or somewhere else.

So... i won't support their business-model. Free internet works by people like me, who host their own services, and work by devs of free software, who build code for selfhosters.

Think about, whose busimess you will support with your bridge.

in reply to jakob 🇦🇹 ✅

@jakob 🇦🇹 ✅

> I use Friendica. And friendica hast a bluesky-adapter built-in.
> As admin i can activate it, and users can configure it for their needs...
>
> So... instead of building such bridges it would be a great idea to build native support for different protocols in the services like mastodon, pleroma, *key...

I am also an administrator of Friendica and for this very reason I know that I cannot ask the developers of the other social networks in the Fediverse to develop special connection bridges with other social networks.

In fact, Friendica is a software that was born "hyperconnected by design": today it supports Bluesky and Tumbir and I remind you that Friendica also supported Facebook and Twitter, at least until these social networks removed support for their APIs!

For this reason you shouldn't worry about the bridges that are about to be built: the nice thing about bridges is that they connect to other places, but in case of danger they can be blown up.

@Ryan Barrett @Ryan Barrett

Unknown parent

tallship

Johannes, There isn't one - they're talking out of their ass.

They're just making noise and emotionally distressed to discover that this is how the #Fediverse currently works, and always has worked - and it's not just the #ActivityPub portions of the Fediverse, or even the Fediverse - it's the entire #Internet...

"If you affect a public post, you have no expectation of privacy".

For those who still feel some sense of having been offended, I welcome them to unplug their computers and toss their iPhones and Androids into the trash. That's really their only option, and they'll come to that realization some day, maybe, and it is of no consequence for anyone else in the world if they don't.

#tallship #FOSS #networking #privacy #ignorance

⛵️

.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

100% do not want if the feed is only one-way. Two way is something I would consider, but broken is broken.
in reply to Eli the Bearded

The site says it’s two way! I’m pretty excited, that deeper interop should be great 😊
in reply to Ryan Barrett

fed.brid.gy/r/snarfed.org/ This is a gross misuse of the fediverse.

Reconsider and make this opt in only.

What is the user agent and IP you use for crawling?

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to amd

From the post he linked I don’t think there’s any crawling; the fed.brid.gy *is* a Fediverse server. ATProto/Bluesky users have to select an exact Fediverse username to be able to follow someone from this side (which notifies us, the same way that it would whenever someone follows us from any other Fediverse server)
Unknown parent

tallship

Yes, we do try to respect the Creative Commons licenses - it's a great thing.

And statistically, studies have revealed that we also do our very best to respect the wishes of publishers who rebuke and refuse to allow their works in a distribution channel where items are DRM encoded.

People should have more faith in the intentions of folks trying to do good, methinks :)

There will always be bad actors

in reply to Ryan Barrett

I know I'm feeding the dogpile, but you need to understand that a service like this must be opt-in. Most users on either platform will never know about this bridge, and are therefore unable to opt out. Bridge services must always be opt-in to ensure that users actually get a choice.

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in reply to Hazelnoot

I think we will be notified if it’s used to follow us from a different network 😊 this bridge is a Fediverse instance itself, so you’ll be notified if anyone uses it to follow you in the same way as any other Fediverse instance; then you can block the user, the server (ie. the whole bridge instance), allow it, or follow back!

I really like that not only is it the same choice as any other Fediverse server, it’s the same approach, nothing new to learn!

in reply to Hazelnoot

@Hazelnoot @Ryan Barrett @Ryan Barrett what JP said, but also bridge services are open things. Opt-in really is more about your usage and server than the bridge.

For users who want a choice in how their posts are federated, I strongly recommend whitelist servers. Otherwise you've already opted in to the fediverse (and bridges are an important part of the fediverse) as a whole.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

Otherwise you've already opted in to the fediverse


That's exactly my point, though. I've opted into the fediverse, not BlueSky or Twitter or Nostr or anything else that's been bridged before.

in reply to Hazelnoot

@Hazelnoot @Ryan Barrett @Ryan Barrett Bluesky and Nostr are the fediverse (or rather, Bluesky will be once they choose to federate, which this bridge is just preparing for), it's not my fault you didn't know the difference.

One of the key elements of the fediverse is you don't get to control what platform others use to view and access your account. There's no "block firefish" or "block hubzilla" or "block mastodon". A bridge is just another extension of that and long before ActivityPub even existed bridges were already established as a major feature of federated networks (hell, I reference an XMMP-Matrix bridge in my bio, all of which predate Activity-Pub and that bridge can only be opted out of by blocking the server... like most bridges).

Basically, this is the way the system was always supposed to work, I'm sorry that you were mislead to think otherwise.

And I guarantee you W3C (the actual stewards of ActivityPub) were absolutely expecting bridges like this to show up immediately (bridges to diaspora* and OStatus would have been some of the first bridges on ActivityPub, again operating silently with no opt-in or opt-out mechanism).

in reply to Shiri Bailem

respectfully, I still disagree. Those networks are entirely separate from the one that we're currently on (ActivityPub). The communities are different, the servers are different, the software is different, even the protocol is different. It's disingenuous to consider them all the same when there's literally no relation.

There's no "block firefish" or "block hubzilla" or "block mastodon".


Side note, but that actually does exist. I once encountered a Mastodon instance that has been patched to automatically suspend any instance running Pleroma. I also know someone who uses a script to detect and block Soapbox instances. Not saying I support that, of course, but it's definitely a thing that some people do here.

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in reply to Hazelnoot

@Hazelnoot @Ryan Barrett it's a false assumption to join a federated network and think you're joining an isolated space.

The people who are upset about this are honestly just people who have false assumptions about what a federated network is and what the fediverse is. If you joined explicitly only wanting to be accessible via ActivityPub native servers... then you were under a false assumption and it's not their fault you that your illusion is being broken.

They are all the same because they've always been the same. All federated networks bridge between eachother, just like above... only exception is this is the weird bridge that offers an opt-out other than blocking.

And as far as hacking a way to block by platform... those methods will also work for this too.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

ok, we apparently have two different and incompatible ideas of what a federated network is. I don't want to argue about that, so let's just end the thread here.

I hope you have a good day. /sincere

in reply to tallship

a believer in the goodness of people! I thought that species went extinct! Is there a club I can join?
in reply to Ryan Barrett

Hi @Ryan Barrett
as a Friendica user I already have the possibility to connect to the world of Bluesky, but I'm really happy that you are creating a useful tool for all other users of the fediverse!

Bluesky is a project with many critical issues and with volumes that can be problematic to manage for the instances of the Fediverse, but it is objectively a very interesting environment that is attracting the best of the users who had remained on Twitter but who unfortunately had not managed to settle into the architecture of the Fediverse.

Every project designed to create bridges deserves to be respected and supported.

For this I thank you!

@Ryan Barrett

in reply to Ryan Barrett

Thank you all for the feedback, both good and bad. I knew I’d hear some pushback that this should be opt in instead of opt out, and I obviously did. I’ve also had some useful conversations and ideas on how to bridge (ahem 😄) that gap and make opt in more realistically usable, along with a few interesting compromise points between opt in and opt out. I’m grateful to everyone today who engaged and talked constructively and offered those new techniques. It’s very possible that this will land somewhere along that spectrum other than fully opt out.

I had plenty of work to do already before launch, and now I have a number of other important ideas to explore too. That’s great! I really do appreciate it. I’ll definitely check back in well before this launches.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

You can go ahead and opt out all of mastodon.art until your bridge is FULLY opt-in.

You've been here since 2017? Long enough to have seen enough entitled techbros think they can claim some kind of ownership over people's data here and use it without consent, and get railed for it.

Opt out is not consent. Fuck off.

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

@Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator @Ryan Barrett ... why don't you just block the instance?

You've been here how long and you think you're entitled to how your posts are federated beyond who you block? Sure you don't want to switch your server to a whitelist server instead?

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in reply to Mastodon•ART 🎨 Curator

You may want to reconsider your "Fuck off" comment while on mastodon.art:

mastodon.art/about/more#code-o…

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in reply to Anders Borch

I left mastodon.art because of these types of inappropriate admin behaviour and (imho) questionable admin decisions a long time ago. They want to control how and with whom their users communicate instead of leaving that to the users as it should be.

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in reply to PhantaNews ✅

@snarfed.org@snarfed.org yes how dare we block the trash, its not like we specifically say on our about page that we're a safe space instance that blocks instances that go against our CoC - oh wait
in reply to Sam :verified:

There is nothing to prevent a commercial organization from setting up a Mastodon server, in fact I believe that there are already examples of that.

So, there is no protection on Mastodon now for sharing your content with commercial services.

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

i like the #nobridge in the account description, but I think you also should respect the #nobot. I don't want to finish with 3000000 hashtags in my description
in reply to retiolus

@retiolus @Ryan Barrett Biggest problem is that there are plenty (and likely more) people who don't want to deal with bots but who don't mind bridges

The hashtags in description is unfortunately just a limitation of AP until they come up with some other method to set a flag like that. (Think of it like how hashtags themselves weren't a feature anywhere until after people had already been using them in their posts on Twitter for quite a while)

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

Thanks for your work on this valuable feature for the Fediverse AND for your transparency and willingness to listen to the feedback of the community.

Please, don't let the loudest and most hostile voices discourage you.

Clearly, we all need to do better at communicating how the Fediverse works and setting realistic expectations about privacy on this network.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

lovely, thanks for creating this, looking forward to talking to old and new friends on #Bluesky from the comfort of my #Mastodon account !! so please by any means opt me in (should it come to it)
in reply to Ryan Barrett

If you'd like to use our content, how about paying us for it?

Or at least consider the copyright position of each post/account rather than assuming what we produce is free for you to re-use.

in reply to Andre

@snarfed.org@snarfed.org
Andre, you know, this public post you just wrote, has been temporarily cached by my pleroma server. I wonder if you consider that i'm using your content by simply answering you.
in reply to Luca Sironi

That would be using the content as intended. In the same way that allowing a browser to cache a web page doesn't entitle the browser use to then republish that content under their own domain.

Similarly, owning and using a DVR doesn't grant one the right to sell copies of a TV show.

I can borrow a book from a library, but that doesn't entitle me to photocopy it, rebind it and sell it to another library.

in reply to Andre

so i'm preemptively good person/ server because i use activitypub but you don't trust bluesky the company, because they are using that other AT protocol.

But once they opened their protocol, it's not just their company using it, other no profit actors can use it as well.

There are mastodon servers owned by company already.

in reply to Luca Sironi

I'm not anti-corporate at all. I have no problem with a large entity implementing native activitypub and interacting natively with the community.

I do not see bridges/gateways that republish content as that at all.

Further, I understand there's a difference between offering someone a beer and having them walk into my house and help themselves to the fridge.

in reply to Andre

@Andre @Luca Sironi in your metaphor this isn't them coming into your house, this is you put a beer on a table labeled free beer for people to come and take. Most people are just taking them and drinking it themselves. You're upset because someone took it and gave it to their friend.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

No, I'm upset because this is a private beer party and you gatecrashed and you're handing the beer to your shady friends in the back alley.

I get your mindset. If you get touch it, it's yours. The mindset that sees nothing wrong with ripping people's writings and republishing them. Nothing wrong with helping yourself to any photograph you see on the internet and using it for whatever purpose you see fit. Scrubbing the author's names off and feeding them into your content farm.

You are not invited to my party.

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in reply to Andre

@Andre @Luca Sironi that just means you joined the fediverse and had bad assumptions about what it is. A "private beer party" in terms of the fediverse is a whitelist instance (an instance that only federates with explicitly pre-approved instances).

You don't get my mindset, what you don't get is what the hell federation is and what the fediverse is all about. This has been the norm for longer than the fediverse existed and sure as hell longer than you've ever been on it. Stop pretending the fediverse is Mastodon and new, and that your assumptions about a space are the absolute truth.

Bridges between federated networks are normal, they don't do opt-in, doesn't matter if one is commercial or not. If you're upset about this then that only means you made assumptions about what you were signing up for or you were outright mislead by someone else.

in reply to Luca Sironi

It's not a matter of trust; it's a matter of choice. I (and many others) made the *choice* to not touch bluesky and now that choice is being taken away from everyone, by default, unless the individual user happens to know this is coming and hoe to stop it.

When the alternative is to flip this "simple" opt-out to an *equally simple* opt-in, the decision to make it opt-out is a decision to take choice away from your demographic in order to artificially enhance the user uptake of your product.

@PCOWandre @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

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in reply to chronohart

Let's be honest most people have no idea this bridge is going to exist. So, they can't opt-in. If nobody opts-in, you won't be able to search for them by their ActivityPub handles. The bridge isn't useful. People on both sides who would like to reconnect with their friends won't be able to. However, if you know you hate BS, you can add the bridge to your personal block list and it isn't an issue for you.

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in reply to Jamie Booth

What if I block #BS (just love the acronym 😉) and the BS #bridge but one or more of my followers who ARE "bridged" boost or link my content? Will it appear on #BS?

@chronohart @luca @PCOWandre @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

This is a really good question and I don't know the answer. This is the kinda of thing I think we should be asking about the bridge.

@snarfed do you know the answer to this?

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in reply to Jamie Booth

It’s seems likely this will happen as a boost creates a new post.

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in reply to Oliphantom Menace

@snarfed.org
I'm wondering if that means there may be a functional difference between blocking the bridge vs adding the #nobridge tag?

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in reply to Jamie Booth

@Jamie Booth @Ryan Barrett @Oli @HistoPol @Luca Sironi @Andre @chronohart @Ryan Barrett a boost in this case will operate the same as with normal ActivityPub, in which case the block should remain honored. It'll be the exact same as someone boosting your post and whether someone you blocked on AP can see that post.

I'll note however that the bridge should not be a concern if you're worried about that, instead you should be concerned of the thousands of instances like mine (Friendica and Hubzilla) that will natively support Bluesky. If we boost your post, then it'll be copied over to Bluesky with no actual connection to you in the network, so your blocks will not apply and you will have no control over the post afterwards.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

From reading some of the other posts and his answer to my earlier post, it seems he is accepting AP blocks in the software. So, both the tag and a block (domain or user) should work the same way.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

#Bluesky #Block

Very concerning, indeed.
How would I go about this?

Would I need to block any and all friendica and hubzillla instances?

"you should be concerned of the thousands of instances like mine (Friendica and Hubzilla) ...boost your post, then it'll be copied over to Bluesky with no actual connection to you in the network, so your blocks will not apply and you will have no control over the post afterwards."

@jamie @oliphant @snarfed.org @luca @PCOWandre @chronohart @snarfed

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

Very concerning indeed. I would suggest logging off and going outside if this is a concern for you.

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

@HistoPol It is my understanding that boosts won't be passed on if you block the bridge or add #nobridge to your profile because the boost still has you as the original author. This would be true no matter which software a person is using.

But if someone quotes you (on any platform, not just the ones mentioned) or takes a screenshot of your post, that would not be blocked. And people can do that now without the bridge. Windows comes with software that allows people to take screenshots. So do phones. And most other fediverse platforms other than Mastodon allow quoting.

The fediverse has over 100 different projects and multiple protocols already connected to it. If you are concerned that people will quote you or boost you on other networks, you might want to consider a whitelist servers where you only allow approved Mastodon instances.

With or without the Bluesky bridge, you are about to be outnumbered by Threads, WordPress, and other projects coming online. ActivityPub is an open network, after all. Always has been.

But the nice thing is that you can control who you connect with by blocking or whitelisting. In your case, being on a whitelist server would probably address your concerns.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to Scott M. Stolz

Thanks a lot, Scott.

I am aware of several of these things. A friend of mine, stefanbohacek.online/@stefan, created jointhefediverse.net to remedy this lack of undesirable for newbies and no-nerds.

I know what #whitelisting is general, but how would I go about this on #Mastodon?

The whitelist, if I don't want to do everything manually (no-go,) would need to be "intelligent" and able to discern the platform s.o. is using for his handle...

I can live with the screenshot issue.

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

@HistoPol

I know what #whitelisting is general, but how would I go about this on #Mastodon?

The whitelist, if I don't want to do everything manually (no-go,) would need to be "intelligent" and able to discern the platform s.o. is using for his handle...


I don't use Mastodon, so I don't know for sure. Some people have mentioned that there is a whitelist mode that is called "limited federation mode" or something like that. The admin would have to turn that on since it is for the whole instance.

If you don't want to use whitelist mode, people have been talking about blocklists that can be imported into Mastodon. I am not familiar with how they work. Maybe someone who uses Mastodon could answer this one?

reshared this

in reply to Scott M. Stolz

In short, it's just like blocking one-by-one but as batch-action. Admins can also block domains using wildcards, I think.

However, either would not work to block specific software. You would indeed have to use an instance in limited federation mode, where each connection is checked one-by-one, to avoid federating with Friendica and Hubzilla instances that could copy your posts over.

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in reply to Qazm

@Qazm There are other options, like using a platform that has privacy, access lists, permissions, and better moderation tools. Mastodon only has block lists, which limits user's control over their own posts.

For example, on Mastodon you can block someone so you can't see their posts, but you can't stop them from replying to posts they have already seen. On Hubzilla, you can actually turn off commenting on your posts so no one can reply or so that specific people can't reply, and can even delete other people's replies to your thread. You control the conversation in your thread. You can't do that on platforms like Mastodon.

Also, on Hubzilla, it is all about user choice. So if Hubzilla implements the Bluesky protocol, both the admin AND the user would have to opt-in. Users would have to actively turn on the Bluesky addon to federate with Bluesky. Otherwise none of their posts will ever be sent to Bluesky. I am pretty sure Friendica will work the same way.

So Hubzilla and Friendica would actually do a better job at blocking Bluesky than the bridge does. And the bridge actually has a lot of options for blocking Bluesky.

So instead of blocking Hubzilla and Friendica, you probably want to start using it instead, since it gives you better protection against Threads and Bluesky than Mastodon does.

@Qazm

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in reply to Scott M. Stolz

@scott I don't think so. Other Hubzilla or Friendica instances that receive a Hubzilla post over AP can still boost it over there, right?

The reply control from your instance won't stop Mastodon users from replying either (though it will stop you seeing those replies, and to some extent will reduce the visibility of replies).

I think it all comes down to what's outlined in foggyminds.com/display/c6ef095… (saw that post a little after my reply above) and open federated social media in general being built around own-access-choices rather than data control, outside of posting modes with very limited reach which *should* be implemented with more privacy than they are.


@HistoPol @Jamie Booth @Oli @Ryan Barrett @Luca Sironi @Andre @chronohart @Ryan Barrett The gist is that if you want to prevent your posts from being shared outside of screenshots and quote-posts (where the contents of the post are just copied) the only option is to join a whitelist-only server.

These are servers that federate only with explicitly approved servers, ie. if someone tries to connect from any instance not on that list they're blocked by default.

That's kinda the root of the argument here where a great many people have a false assumption that the fediverse is about control of your data when it is quite the opposite. It's like trying to protect your art from being used by others... by marking it Creative Commons.

The entire design of all federated systems is around open sharing, you can only get control over how your posts spread in a closed system with little or no federation.

As far as whether or not you use those platforms, my example was regardless of whether you're a user.

My server federates across multiple different protocols, if I boost your post then your post is probably being made available to multiple different networks automatically.

The protections and control involved in federated networks is not in how your data is shared, but in how your access is controlled.

In the fediverse you don't have to worry about a bad admin blocking your access to everyone you know, you can freely move accounts between instances. If you piss of Elon for instance, you're cut off from Twitter and everyone on it... full stop... but if you piss off your instance admin, you just move instances and can still connect with everyone.

It's also control over your experience in that you're not relying purely on what their algorithms think you should see. If the instance your on has an algorithm set up that you don't like, then you can move instances to one that has the algorithm you like.

You also have protections against enshittification (the process by which those other networks will draw you in with great features, and then once you're locked in slowly shut down or degrade those features). If features that are important to you start getting shut down on your server... you can move to one that keeps them. If a platform developer does it, another developer can fork the project to keep those features alive.

You also have choice in terms of clients and experiences. You're using Mastodon and I'm on Friendica (I know your instance type because Friendica shows me a little icon beside posts). I vastly prefer the Friendica experience, and I have the choice to use that. And I can use that without forcing you to use the same interface.


This entry was edited (10 months ago)

reshared this

in reply to Qazm

@Qazm That was sort of my point. If you want to have more control over who can see and respond to your posts, you probably should stop using Mastodon and switch to a platform that supports privacy, access control, permissions, and moderation.
@Qazm

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

"...Friendica and Hubzilla) that will natively support Bluesky. If we boost your post, then it'll be copied over to Bluesky with no actual connection to you in the network,..."
But I've got another question, as so far, I had been in favor of #Friendica:
Does this mean if I were 2 use these 2 platforms, I could never prevent my posts / content from being seen on #Elmo's PayPal platform?!?
Or is there really no difference? @jamie @oliphant @snarfed.org @luca @PCOWandre @chronohart @snarfed

reshared this

in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

@HistoPol @Jamie Booth @Oli @Ryan Barrett @Luca Sironi @Andre @chronohart @Ryan Barrett The gist is that if you want to prevent your posts from being shared outside of screenshots and quote-posts (where the contents of the post are just copied) the only option is to join a whitelist-only server.

These are servers that federate only with explicitly approved servers, ie. if someone tries to connect from any instance not on that list they're blocked by default.

That's kinda the root of the argument here where a great many people have a false assumption that the fediverse is about control of your data when it is quite the opposite. It's like trying to protect your art from being used by others... by marking it Creative Commons.

The entire design of all federated systems is around open sharing, you can only get control over how your posts spread in a closed system with little or no federation.

As far as whether or not you use those platforms, my example was regardless of whether you're a user.

My server federates across multiple different protocols, if I boost your post then your post is probably being made available to multiple different networks automatically.

The protections and control involved in federated networks is not in how your data is shared, but in how your access is controlled.

In the fediverse you don't have to worry about a bad admin blocking your access to everyone you know, you can freely move accounts between instances. If you piss of Elon for instance, you're cut off from Twitter and everyone on it... full stop... but if you piss off your instance admin, you just move instances and can still connect with everyone.

It's also control over your experience in that you're not relying purely on what their algorithms think you should see. If the instance your on has an algorithm set up that you don't like, then you can move instances to one that has the algorithm you like.

You also have protections against enshittification (the process by which those other networks will draw you in with great features, and then once you're locked in slowly shut down or degrade those features). If features that are important to you start getting shut down on your server... you can move to one that keeps them. If a platform developer does it, another developer can fork the project to keep those features alive.

You also have choice in terms of clients and experiences. You're using Mastodon and I'm on Friendica (I know your instance type because Friendica shows me a little icon beside posts). I vastly prefer the Friendica experience, and I have the choice to use that. And I can use that without forcing you to use the same interface.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

(1/n)

I think I owe you a quick #INTRO, as I have not been in contact with you before, so you might better understand my concerns.

I am a political commentator, as well as an activist. This is why I cannot remain silent:

This is a global super-election year. #Democracy is up for grabs in about 50 countries.1)--This is how the billionaires and the #autocrats like #Putin and #Xi see it, or how #YoelRoth...

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

(2/n)

...former head of #Twitter's Trust and Security department, might have phrased it. 2)

We have all seen what has happened to #Twitter. What many still don't know, is why he is supposedly burning a lot of money with the purchase: 3).

👉#Musk and his #TESCREAL 4) adherents from #SiliconValley are vying for world domination.👈 #Elmo already is the world's most...

This entry was edited (3 months ago)
in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

(3/n)

...influential fascist, just considering his market power regarding #SpaceX 5) and the "voice" he has as #X owner. By turning off his #StarLink service in #Crimea, he has successfully prevented potentially victorious strikes by #Ukraine against #Russia's invasion force.

But they are not the only #billionaire group vying for even more power. The most...

in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

(4/n)

... successful has so far been the #FederalistSociety in conjunction with the #CenterForNationalPolicy (#CNP), among whose major feats are putting #Trump in the #WhiteHouse and hijacking the #US #SupremeCourt. 6)

#Autocrats like #Putin and #Xi trying to gain influence through military and economic means are the other group of people trying to destroy #Western #democracies by disseminating...

in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

(5/n)

... #disinformation and carrying out #CyberWarfare.

And, last but not least, another, even more dangerous #Elmo's pal, #PeterThiel, is enabling governments around the globe to get rid of opponents. The dangerous spyware he owns, #Palantir, is being used e.g. to hunt down investigative journalists in #SouthAmerica 8) and elsewhere 7) and for #discriminatory...

This entry was edited (5 months ago)
in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

For journalists the value of the fediverse is in not getting silenced. It's here to amplify voices in that fashion so that nobody can be silenced, for good or ill (ie. you can block Nazi instances so you don't see them, but you can't stop a Nazi instance from existing or sharing content).

If you operate in a "I control where my message goes" manner, then you're operating in a manner that can be very easily silenced. It drastically limits your reach.

It's one of those fundamental things where you can't have it both ways, control over your reach is inherently limiting to your reach.

And when talking about the fight against fascism, uncontrolled spread is very much preferable as they can't silence you. If you are careful in your security you can post from an account until the fascists shut down your server... but the post will still be out there floating around. And you can just as easily stay on the network by starting a new account every time they shut down a server... they'd have to shut down the whole network to stop you.

Bridges make it even harder for them because then you can also jump between platforms and if they can't shut down your server they'd have to shut down every single bridge... which new ones can be started with trivial ease (a lot less work and resources than starting up normal instances).

There's nothing they can do to you over a bridge that they can't already do without a bridge, in fact they have less control through a bridge. But you on the other hand have your voice amplified even further.

Additionally the whole fediverse gets stronger as it encourages development on both sides, if one starts lagging behind in features/quality it permits users to move without "leaving" the fediverse.

If Bluesky starts pumping hardcore propaganda and silencing leftist voices... then the bridge offers a light, showing the abuse and giving them a way out that doesn't involve starting over from scratch.

@HistoPol @Jamie Booth @Oli @Ryan Barrett @Luca Sironi @Andre @chronohart @Ryan Barrett

in reply to Shiri Bailem

(1/2)

"If you operate in a "I control where my message goes" manner, then you're operating in a manner that can be very easily silenced. It drastically limits your reach.

It's one of those fundamental things where you can't have it both ways, control over your reach is inherently limiting to your reach."

Excellent point, Shiri. Taken.

However, please...

@jamie @oliphant @snarfed.org @luca @PCOWandre @chronohart @snarfed

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

"...have to shut down the whole network to stop you.

Bridges make it even harder for them because then you can also jump between platforms and if they can't shut down your server they'd have to shut down every single bridge..."

I begin to like #bridges. #FascismProof and #AutocracyProof, so-to-speak :)

@jamie @oliphant @snarfed.org @luca @PCOWandre @chronohart @snarfed

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

@HistoPol

I begin to like #bridges. #FascismProof and #AutocracyProof, so-to-speak :)


That is one of the main reasons the fediverse exists and and is structured the way it is.

There still are some concerns about trolls commenting on your posts, but that can be dealt with using the proper tools.

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” -- John Gilmore


This applies to the fediverse as well.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

(1/2)

"If Bluesky starts pumping hardcore propaganda and silencing leftist voices... then the bridge offers a light, showing the abuse and giving them a way out that doesn't involve starting over from scratch."

How so? I have not read that you can migrate your #BlueSky account to another #Fediverse platform, say, #friendica

However, for me the single biggest #exit barrier is, that I...

@jamie @oliphant @snarfed.org @luca @PCOWandre @chronohart @snarfed

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

(2/2)

...would lose my over 40k posts again, and *a lot* of them are important to me, as I regularly reference back to older posts. Furthermore, convos/discussions, such as these, are of value and are also worth keeping for future reference. They'd be lost, too, by moving. AFAIC, there is only one #Fediverse platform that permits migrating posts, but only internally, too.
//

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

@HistoPol @Jamie Booth @Oli @Ryan Barrett @Luca Sironi @Andre @chronohart @Ryan Barrett missed this earlier, but the way out isn't usually account migration, that's a very specific and non-standard function that Mastodon implemented (Mastodon has a bad habit of only half-implementing ActivityPub and then rolling out it's own features and forcing everyone else to comply with their non-standard nonsense... they're kinda the internet explorer of the fediverse)

The way out is because you can leave without severing connections. I'm not saying you won't have to re-add people... but that you still have the option to re-add people. If someone deletes their Twitter account... they lose access to everyone that's only on Twitter. If Bluesky is bridged (and no ifs ands or buts, open bridges will exist despite people's complaints) and they delete their Bluesky account... they'd still have access to those same people.

The whole reason Facebook sticks around and maintains enormous power is because so many people don't have the option to leave without making themselves second class citizens in their communities. (Literally the only reason I have a facebook account... if I could access them over fedi, I'd delete my account in a heartbeat)

in reply to Shiri Bailem

I did this using a Tool migrating from the (now) #DeadBirdSite.

Still, not being able to migrate the convos is NOT an "alternative", but an *escape hatch*."

One example, that many will know:

Imagine, that you invented 1000's of hours uploading and curating pics and shorts on your #Instagram account.
For whatever reason, you cannot maintain your account. Starting a new one, you lose all your work (it's not just...

@jamie @oliphant @snarfed.org @luca @PCOWandre @chronohart @snarfed

reshared this

in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

(2/2)

...just the pics, but the interaction with contacts.)

PS:
I know:
...there are tools for exporting (beside the point)
...many people here even autodelete there posts (utterly different use-case)
...it's better than on most corporate sites (yes, but still just "rudimentary" flexibility, at least on #Mastodon.)
...that #Firefish(?) (still?) supports own-post migration (but that was no choice when I joined)

//

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

Like I said before, all of that is non-standard functions that the vast majority of the fediverse doesn't even support.

I think you might be confusing ease and possibility. Few people even when moving instances within the fediverse are going to have that option (save for those moving between two instances of the same platform).

It's not whether there's some convenient tool to move your posts or other data.

It's about whether after the move you can still get the same updates and talk to the same people.

Think of it in terms of the oldest surviving federated network: changing email accounts.

Before SMTP (the federated email protocol), you had to have accounts on every server with people you wanted to talk to. After you only had to have one account, but could readily move about the network to other servers if you got fed up with your server's bullshit or another offered better services.

(And for the record, public bridges with no opt-out methods exist for email as well)

@HistoPol @Jamie Booth @Oli @Ryan Barrett @Luca Sironi @Andre @chronohart @Ryan Barrett

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

I didn't knew this thing that you can't migrate your follower from mastodon to friendica 😐

From mastodon to pleroma (and i think also misskey) it works.

cc @informapirata

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in reply to Luca Sironi

I understand your difficulties, but always remember that Friendica is compatible with ActivityPub BUT it works with a different protocol and its profiles are particular objects that contain a kind of unique key

@shiri

in reply to informapirata ⁂ :privacypride:

@informapirata :privacypride: @Luca Sironi it used to work with a different protocol, Friendica has been ActivityPub based longer than Mastodon has been alive.

Always remember that Mastodon is well established to be a poor neighbor in the AP community, not supporting the full spec and often implementing their own non-standard solutions.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

@activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

Well, migrating followers (just followers) should really be a standard feature of ActivityPub then.
One that must be implemented by all the supposed AP compatible projects

Nobody is gonna buy the theoretical reach of all the same people, like real freedom to change fediverse provider.

cc @evan

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in reply to Luca Sironi

In reality, when it comes to migrations, Friendica does much more than any other ActivityPub-compatible platform, such as importing all the messages and contents of the old profile...
Friendica cannot be responsible for Mastodon's flaws 🤷🏽‍♂️

@evan @shiri @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

I'm actually pretty sure Friendica put up Activitypub a few months later than mastodon, but otherwise I agree with what you say.

@luca

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in reply to Luca Sironi

@Luca Sironi @informapirata :privacypride: Some platforms have specifically gone out of their way to support Mastodon's non-standard functions... that doesn't make them standard or a platform as deficient for not supporting them.

A lot of that has to do with the relationship between them, where many of those are newer platforms inspired by and emulating Mastodon. Friendica on the other hand is one of the old school platforms that looooong predates Mastodon, so supporting any of their non-standard stuff is a monumental task (it's easy to support something when you're starting from scratch)

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

It's because that's not the bridge, that's a Friendica group about working on such bridges. Friendica supports group accounts that you post to by tagging the group.

Group accounts work by boosting every post that tags them.

The initial post was made to the Fediverse News, Fediverse Developer Discussion, and AP-AT-Bridge Group groups, which is why you'll see them boosting almost every comment throughout this entire thread. Anyone who didn't explicitly removed them from the references is posting to that group as well.

The bridge will not appear as a single account. The bridge will translate accounts through it, so if I made an account named Shiri on the official bluesky server, then followed you through the bridge you would see a follow request from shiri:bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy (name formatting probably will differ slightly), likewise that would be the name that would appear for everything I do through the bridge with your account.

If you wanted to block my specific bluesky account from accessing your account, you could block it as normal and it'll work just the same as it always has.

With # NoBridge in your bio, when I go to look up your account through the bridge I either won't get anything at all as if you don't exist or it'll tell me that you've opted out of the bridge.

@HistoPol @Jamie Booth @Oli @Ryan Barrett @Luca Sironi @Andre @chronohart @Ryan Barrett

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

Thanks for the explanation, Shiri.
I pay attention to such thinks, but even with hindsight, I do not see such a group reference.
On #Mastodon, groups are also possible, but I forgot how to use them, as I used them so little.

@jamie @oliphant @snarfed.org @luca @PCOWandre @chronohart @snarfed

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

Unless it was recently added, groups are not a thing on Mastodon itself. I do know in the Mastodon side of things a lot of people use Guppe: a.gup.pe/ for groups, which work in the same fashion as Friendica groups, just with no moderator/admin.

In the case of the groups, all 3 have it in their description that they're groups.

Because Mastodon has no support for groups there's no indicator anywhere other than the description that an account is a group account.

@HistoPol @Jamie Booth @Oli @Ryan Barrett @Luca Sironi @Andre @chronohart @Ryan Barrett

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

@Shiri Bailem That is why we have resorted to placing the word "Forum" in the display name. But that might not be enough for some people who don't realize how groups and forums work.
This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

@HistoPol

I pay attention to such thinks, but even with hindsight, I do not see such a group reference.


That's because Mastodon doesn't tell you that

  • it's a group (because Mastodon doesn't understand the concept of groups)
  • it's on Friendica (because Mastodon does its best to shield the existence of non-Mastodon Fediverse projects from its users)


On #Mastodon, groups are also possible, but I forgot how to use them, as I used them so little.


Not yet. They're working on it. And everything else that has working groups/forums now is afraid that Mastodon will re-invent the wheel in a way that's the most incompatible possible to what already exists on more than half a dozen Fediverse projects.

What you mean is probably Guppe, but that isn't built into Mastodon and a far cry from what's possible on Friendica.

CC: @Jamie Booth @Oli @Ryan Barrett @Luca Sironi @Andre @chronohart

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Friendica #Groups

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

@HistoPol

I am a political commentator, as well as an activist. This is why I cannot remain silent:


For someone like you, you would probably want to post publicly, to as many platforms and protocols as you can, so you reach a wider audience. But you would need to choose a platform with better permissions and moderation tools.

For example, you would want to control who can comment on your posts and be able to delete comments that are toxic. Mastodon does not have this capability, but most platforms that have threaded conversations give you that ability.

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in reply to Scott M. Stolz

" But you would need to choose a platform with better permissions and moderation tools.

For example, you would want to control who can comment on your posts and be able to delete comments that are toxic. "

Very true.
However, I have a very strick block policy and in 98% of cases, the threat of using it, helps.
I always wonder a little bit what happens, after I block s.o.
My understanding is, that his/her posts remain, but we cannot see each others posts anymore (counter-block, mostly)

reshared this

in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

@HistoPol On platforms like Hubzilla and Streams (and most other platforms that support threaded conversations), you have more control.

Basically, a threaded conversation is a container, and the person who started the conversation controls what goes into that container. If you, as the person who started the conversation, don't like what someone said, you can delete their post. Since it is part of your container, a delete notification goes out to everyone participating on your thread and the post gets deleted for them too. The person who originally posted it would still have their copy, and their followers might still see it, but it would no longer be distributed via your thread to people following the thread. You can also prevent someone from commenting on your post at all, which in that case, their comment gets rejected and is not distributed to anyone.

It works similar with forum topics, except the forum owns the initial conversation. The administrator or moderator can delete posts and restrict commenting.

The threaded conversation model gives you more control over the conversation than non-threaded platforms based on pre-X Twitter.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

Based on Ryan's response and some of the other descriptions, it sounds like the bridge software knows how to handle AP block requests. So, they should be the same.

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in reply to Hartmut Neubauer

@shiri
(1/2)
I guess I can answer this question now: once s.o. quotes or boosts your content (= new post) you lose control of your content and cannot prevent it from being shared.
I'd say, unless you limited the post to your followers, however if one of your followers were on the #Friendica or #Hubzilla platform, they'd still be able to quote your post and then you'd still lose control,...
@jamie @chronohart @luca @PCOWandre @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews @snarfed

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

(2/2)

...correct @shiri? (I hope I have understood everything correctly that all of you had such great patience to explain to me today.
//

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

@HistoPol

I'd say, unless you limited the post to your followers, however if one of your followers were on the #Friendica or #Hubzilla platform, they'd still be able to quote your post and then you'd still lose control,...


Not exactly accurate. Anyone can copy and paste your words into the post box and quote you. Some platforms make it easier than others though.

Also, Mastodon is rumored to be including quote posts soon, so even on Mastodon, people will be able to quote you.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to Scott M. Stolz

Copy and paste is possible, anywhere, always, yes.

Difference: copy & paste will not leave a trail to your original post, a link will.

#Mastodon was supposed to have quote posts last summer. Then @Gargron sent a lengthy explanation that resources had to be recomitted to fix backend features. Since, I haven't heard anyhting new regarding this, but I have not searched for it either.

reshared this

in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

@HistoPol

Copy and paste is possible, anywhere, always, yes.

Difference: copy & paste will not leave a trail to your original post, a link will.


Actually, it can. I can manually type your handle and what you said and it will reference you. Just mentioning someone's handle such as @HistoPol@mastodon.social references them (i.e. @HistoPol)

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

Of course, you are right regarding the issue of boosting content. So I would like to intervene a little bit earlier.
If, e.g., Babsi on Bluesky follows Mary on Mastodon, Mary already has given her consent to interact with BS via the Bridge. But now Freddie, another fediverse user who has NOT given this consent, answers to Mary's post. Question: Can Babsi read Freddie's comments?
->

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in reply to Hartmut Neubauer

Proposal 1:
Yes, but the "like", "share" and "answer" buttons are hidden or disabled for Babsi; furthermore Freddie's fediverse address ("@freddiemiller@friendica.xyz") is hidden so that it is not easy for Babsi to mention him. Perhaps it is even possible to prevent textwise selection and copying. But even if copy & paste would be possible, as @HistoPol mentioned, no trail would be left. ->

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in reply to Hartmut Neubauer

I 💚
social.cologne/@agrinova/11194…
@jamie @chronohart @luca @PCOWandre @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews @snarfed @shiri


Proposal 1:
Yes, but the "like", "share" and "answer" buttons are hidden or disabled for Babsi; furthermore Freddie's fediverse address ("@freddiemiller@friendica.xyz") is hidden so that it is not easy for Babsi to mention him. Perhaps it is even possible to prevent textwise selection and copying. But even if copy & paste would be possible, as @HistoPol mentioned, no trail would be left. ->

in reply to Hartmut Neubauer

@snarfed.org 2nd possibility: to hide Freddie's posts to Babsi. Okay, in this case not the whole discussion would be visible. But this might be done if Freddie has actively contradicted to the Bridge.
3rd: to display and allow all. But this might be difficult and a contradiction to that what Freddie has agreed to.
This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to Hartmut Neubauer

@snarfed.org Maybe that there is still something to do for the development. For example, if Mary answers to a couple of users (and usually you see all their fediverse names in the head of the message), Babsi sees a copy of this message with only the @ names of the Bluesky users and those Fediverse users who have agreed to the Bridge, but without those who have not.
This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to Jamie Booth

If you are an ActivityPub user that wishes to connect with bsky, you will likely find information about this bridge, assuming it isn't an immediate failure, as soon as you search the web for a method to connect ActivityPub to bsky.

@luca @PCOWandre @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

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in reply to chronohart

What about if the person reaching out is from BS? If my friend on the AP side hasn't found this bridge and opted in, they won't show up when I try to add them. A lot has to go right for these people to reconnect if they have to opt in. In my case, all I have are remembered Twitter handles that I'll try to search across the bridge fir that handle. If I get results, I'll try to follow.

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in reply to Jamie Booth

What about people that came to ActivityPub specifically because people that were harassing them are not here? This bridge makes it just that much easier for abusers to find their victims again because all they have to do is try a remembered Twitter handle to see if they get a hit through the bridge.

Do you disagree that this sort of abuse can happen?

@luca @PCOWandre @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

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in reply to chronohart

No, but they could also create an AP account and harass the person. This bridge doesn't make that any more or less likely. You still have the same tools to block a user even if they are over the bridge.

I think there are a lot of positives to connect people who landed on different platforms. The possibility of harassment is really a more global Internet problem not AP/BS/Threads specific.

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in reply to Jamie Booth

You're confusing "possible" with "likely". Yes, it is absolutely *possible* for an abuser to join AP in order to find their victim, but it's less *likely* because that is an additional barrier.

On the other hand, if the abuser joins BS because they prefer that network and the only way to find their victim is to join AP, that will be enough of a barrier for many abusers to give up, making it less *likely* for the abuse to happen.

I agree that there are a lot of positives to connecting folks across networks *when they actively want to do so*, but it shouldn't be foised on people that already actively chose to join AP *instead* of BS.

@luca @PCOWandre @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

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in reply to chronohart

I don't believe the choice of network matters that much. I think the harasser is more likely to go that extra step. If not, then a simple AP block solves that problem and that's a minor cost to enable better communication between people.

If this conversation around Bridgy Fed proves anything it's that we need more, less hostile communication between people.

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in reply to Jamie Booth

@activitypubblueskybridge@venera.social @fedidevs @fediversenews if nobody opts into a shitty service, people won't use it!

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in reply to Jamie Booth

I would disagree. First, only a few people would use the bridge. But then the new connection would spread out like a seed - slowly, but spread. Then the number of bridge users will grow exponentially. That means, an opt-in (or at least no pure opt-out) would be a good option.
@chronohart @luca @PCOWandre @activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews

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in reply to Hartmut Neubauer

That takes a lot of time, and as someone in IT, most people take the defaults and are SHOCKED to learn some features exist. 😁

Having this behave like the rest of the fediverse accelerates the awareness and usefulness of the bridge.

You can more rapidly achieve the goal of allowing people to connect and converse. That is after all why the fediverse exists. The rest of this is semantics.

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in reply to Jamie Booth

@Jamie Booth @Luca Sironi @Andre @Hartmut Neubauer @chronohart Hell, I'm aware of a few bridges and don't use them and have never even seen traffic from them... There's a few that I'm wary about, but again... I've never even seen any of the traffic from them.

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in reply to Jamie Booth

Okay, this is the other side. On the other hand, one can admit that we discuss about a bridge to bluesky, but if, anywhere in the world, a server would join the fediverse spreading hatred, bad thoughts and dangerous algorithms, nobody would discuss.
Anyway. Before the new bridge service starts, I would strongly recommend to deal with European data protection laws for they are stronger in the EU than elsewhere.

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in reply to Hartmut Neubauer

I'm not a GDPR expert, but because the bridge isn't stateful (ie just forwards posts) I don't think you are going to apply any of the data directives. Worst case, you might have to do something for instances hosted in Europe. But whatever you do applies much more strongly to actual instance servers. Those are hosting data created by and about users.

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

"Moderate people, not code" fails to learn from the simple fact that technology is not, and has never been, neutral.

You have to do both.

Nice catchphrase, but completely meaningless.

AP-AT-Bridge Group reshared this.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

Please excuse my tone, but: why the fuck isn't this opt-in instead of opt-out?
in reply to Csepp 🌢

@Csepp 🌢 @Ryan Barrett because you're on a federated network. If you want opt-in you join a whitelist instance.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

no. Our freedom of choice is not being respected here. This is bad and will explode. You cant force us against our will.

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in reply to F4GRX Sébastien

@F4GRX Sébastien @Ryan Barrett @Csepp 🌢 you just woefully misunderstand what you're working with then. This is a federated platform, the entire platform is opt-out by default.

Your freedom of choice on the fediverse is very simple: unless you're on a whitelist server (in which case it only federates with pre-approved instances and no one else), then you have consented to your posts being federated, you have made the choice to have your posts federated.

Federation doesn't mean "my posts will only be on activitypub", it means "my posts will be freely accessible to everyone".

Your response here makes it very clear that you have no familiarity with how the fediverse works, how bridges work, or even the history of the fediverse.

Everyone actually behind the development of the fediverse is keenly aware of bridges like this and accepts them as a natural part of the fediverse. The original developers of the fediverse see them as a blessing to the fediverse.

Your complaints about consent and being "forced against our will" are akin to the people who go to a waterpark and complain about not consenting to getting wet... by being here you have consented to this. It's not anyone else's fault that you joined a federated platform with no understanding of what federation means.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

This is the Facebook-lawyer understanding of consent. I think we can do better than that.

JFYI I've been here since, idk 2017 or so. People were pissed off about indexing then as well. You don't get to pull the seniority card.

The problem with automatic indexing is that the danger for those who don't wish to be indexed is not negligible. If someone *wants* to be indexed, they can opt in, and there is no great danger in forgetting to do so.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to Csepp 🌢

And by your logic, in an opt-in design the blame for forgetting to opt-in can be put on the user, because they didn't understand what indexing means.
in reply to Allen

I sent a message to snarfed telling him what I thought of his outrageous "opt-out" option ...what a way to pad the numbers count for bluesky!
Who would want to deal with an organization that has the audacity to pull this stunt!
in reply to Snowshadow

Agree! Though for me, part of the appeal of being in an open world (Fediverse) is not having someone sign me up for something I didn’t ask for. It’s a simple as that.
in reply to Allen

That is my point. That is why I am outraged. I am still swearing every time I think about it. Unbelievable the nerve!!
The Arrogance!!
in reply to Snowshadow

@Snowshadow @Allen you are not being signed up for anything with this, it's just another instance translating between the two protocols and all normal tools still apply.

The arrogance is thinking you can make public posts on a federate platform and dictate how they federate.

I'll also note that this isn't a corporate person doing this, it's a private individual. Bluesky has promised to federate under it's own protocol since it's beginning, once it does so you will see many instances on the bluesky protocol much the same as we're talking on the activitypub protocol, this bridge just connects the two protocols and a lot of people are interested in implementing such tools because that's the whole point of federation.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

Am I understanding correctly that you think it’s arrogant to simply ask an instance moderator a question, while not threatening to burn the village down?

It’s cool that people are interested. Where there’s one side, there’s another. The point we’re trying to make is this should be OptIn BECAUSE it’s created by a private entity, that’s all. It’s not an outrageous take.

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in reply to Allen

@Allen

The point we’re trying to make is this should be OptIn BECAUSE it’s created by a private entity, that’s all. It’s not an outrageous take.


Out of the over 46,000 independently operated servers on the fediverse, how many are run by private entities? I don't know but I am guessing that it is more than 1.

At least with Bluesky and Threads, it is easy to block. But I am guessing that it would be nearly impossible to figure out which of the 46,000 ActivityPub-enabled servers are commercial and which are not.

And Threads will be connecting to ActivityPub natively. And so will WordPress. Both will bring in millions of users.

I respect people's choice to block whomever they want, but the ActivityPub part of the fediverse already has commercial servers in it. Bluesky would just be one more, which you are free to block.

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in reply to Allen

Mastodon federates by default to all new instances. Bluesky Bridge is only a new instance.

Your problem is with Mastodon, not with this bridge.

in reply to Proxima Centauri

Which is why I asked @Gargron to opt out.

And, being ok with seeing several problems in one scenario, I also don’t like being opted into something I didn’t ask for.

in reply to Allen

You can also block all bridged bluesky instances. This bridge is a big chance for the fediverse to gain more relevancy. You can go to an instance not federating with them, but you shouldn’t expect @Gargron’s mainstream instances to do so.
in reply to user8e8f87e

I completely agree… And that would be the next step. I would simply spin up my own instance. But as a resident of this instant, I see no harm in asking.
in reply to user8e8f87e

I have yet to find someone explain to me the difference between the proposed #bluesky bridge and someone following me from a Hubzilla instance.
While my instinctive reaction was “leave us alone” I didn’t find a definition for “us” and I don’t think that the angry people have.
My conclusion is that the bridge is *exactly* what the rest of the #fedi is. All the drama is stupid.
Shun it for size or lack of moderation, not for existing.
in reply to chris@strafpla.net

@fediversenews Isn’t this an example of the Fediverse working exactly as designed? Anybody who really objects to it can just block it. I don’t understand why they’re trying to get the rest of us to do it too – it’s their decision, but it’s not necessarily mine or anyone else’s
in reply to ACCOUNT MOVED

Yes. Implement the AP protocol and you are part of it; then anybody can decide to block you. That’s how it works. I really hope @snarfed will just implement it.

(Nice profile picture btw! 🖤❤️)

in reply to user8e8f87e

@user8e8f87e @Ryan Barrett @Eugen Rochko @Proxima Centauri @chris@strafpla.net @Allen @Snowshadow @dogzilla you missed the point of what a bridge is if you're saying you hope they implement it... A bridge isn't some web scraper, it's a translator between protocols. It speaks the AP protocol and one side and the AT protocol on the other.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

I had messaged @snarfed.org to ask about opting out and Ryan couldn’t have been any more respectful. He’s also looking at a way to make it opt in (github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/…)

I apologized for being part of the heat and look forward to supporting Ryan’s work when possible.

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in reply to Allen

man, that issue is one hell of a dumpster fire!

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in reply to Macumba Macaca

It is indeed, but that’s what happens when passionate people collide in a new-ish environment. We’re all trying to find a way to get what we want, and hopefully fair compromises can be had for any of these challenges.

Wishing you a beautiful day!

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in reply to Proxima Centauri

Maybe...
What irritates me is that I left social media for quite a period of time b/c I was fed up with the nonsense going on in corp. owned social media platforms. So I found out about fediverse and now threads is here and bluesky.
That's fine...I just don't want to see any of it or interact with those instances and I have blocked them...I don't want that toxic element in my TL.
in reply to Tim Erickson, @stpaultim

Sure there is. Defederation and account level domain blocks are protections against that. Which are exactly the topics I asked about.
in reply to Ryan Barrett

I'll just respond to say, thanks for letting me know. I hope things go well, and I like the option to connect withore people.
@activitypubblueskybridge @fedidevs @fediversenews
in reply to Ryan Barrett

I trust that you will change OptOut to OptIn before your bridge goes online.

Just to make sure, I hereby prohibit the bridging of any information from this instance to BlueSky.

Furthermore, what are your plans for posts with more than 300 characters? I hope that you are not planning to forward incomplete posts to Bluesky, possibly destroying their meaning.

#nobridge

in reply to zeitverschreib [mastodon]

@zeitverschreib [mastodon] @Ryan Barrett (a) the hashtag goes in your bio (b) that's not going to change, they're being nice, the norm is that bridges don't ask and the only way to have a say at all is to just block the bridge... which you can always do.

If you feel like your content needs to be opt-in to distribute, you should set all your posts private (bridge will only see them if you accept a follow request from a Bluesky user on the bridge), or you should move to a whitelist server (where your posts will only federate to explicitly approved servers)

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

I have no interest of connecting into Bluesky, and I'm offended by your assumption that me, and most people, would be interested (opt-out instead of opt-in).

I call for #fediblock of bsky.brid.gy, and I'm blocking you. Thank you for listening.

in reply to Joana de Castro Arnaud

@Joana de Castro Arnaud @Ryan Barrett it basically is opt in because someone on one side or the other will have to request the content, either one of your users requests a bluesky account or a bluesky user requests your account.

And the assumption is perfectly reasonable given that it's essentially just another instance, as if Bluesky spun up an activitypub endpoint themselves. The opt-out is at least a nice gesture (though unnecessary because blocking a server is an opt out regardless).

in reply to Ryan Barrett

A few more questions, if you don't mind:

1. Where does the bridge pass messages on the Bluesky side? Directly to other PDS? Through the Relay? Does it function as a PDS?

2. What ATproto services is it using to pull posts back to the fediverse side? An App View? A feed generator? A labeller?

3. Is the choice of those services set by the PDS, or will they be customizable from the fediverse side on a per-account basis?

in reply to tness16

@tness16 @Nizar Kerkeni 🇹🇳 نزار القرقني @Ghazi @Ryan Barrett this isn't a window, it's an adjoining door. It's letting us and them talk without having to first exit the house, walk around the building and re-enter a completely different house.

And to be clear, the fediverse is both, this bridge is the fediverse in action. What you mean is ActivityPub.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

Shiri that’s the most apt analogy I’ve found so far! May I appropriate that? I find myself sometimes trying to explain fediverse concepts to outsiders.

I usually resort to the villages-of-many-small-unique-buildngs vs. one-single-monolithic-high-rise allegory.

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in reply to tness16

I'm a little bit torn regarding this issue. While it is good to be able to interact with new people who prefer Bluesky for whatever reason, some people don't want their posts shared outside of the fediverse.
Whatever we post here is publicly accessible to anyone anyways, so I don't think this is a completely bad idea.

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in reply to tness16

Assuming the big door in this context is to join an ActivityPub server, I know several people who came here when Twitter blew up and weren't warmly welcomed. Lots of people telling them they were doing it wrong, etc. So, they left and went to places like Threads or BlueSky. This is giving them a chance to be on their instance of choice (BlueSky) and still follow their friends who did stay on ActivityPub.

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in reply to Jamie Booth

I am not against the people of Threads or BlueSky my opinion is the management of relationships between these two very different worlds, a world of enormous capital based on profit thanks to advertisements and a free and voluntary world which seeks tranquility
1/2

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in reply to tness16

with this bridge the infiltrations of artificial intelligence will go unnoticed and will spread like a cancer. There are a lot of questions for example spammers who will enter through this bridge who can stop them? The list of questions is long.
2/2

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in reply to tness16

I think it's ok to question the management and assess the risks (as long as you don't do it in a vacuum...AI is/will be an issue on ActivityPub as well). But, I also would remind you that there are real people who just want to get along and interact with their friends who happen to be on ActivityPub. This bridge allows that.

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in reply to Jamie Booth

Let's assume that the intention is good, it's true, social relations are important, I agree. Will the bridge only allow humans to pass? or bots too?

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in reply to tness16

My guess is it won't have any way to know. But I don't know if BS has a bot tag like Mastodon.

I would also say not all bots are bad. You can have bots that report traffic or weather. Governments have bots for distributing information.

I feel like a lot of the responses to this have been reactions to the worst possible scenario. That rarely happens. Reality is somewhere in the middle.

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in reply to Jamie Booth

There is good and bad everywhere, I am like anyone who loves this fediverse world as it is with these current flaws, and the motivated people who each try to improve it on their own. I hope the bridge follows the same logic.

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

@Ryan Barrett @Ryan Barrett glad to see this already underway, sorry however to see the amount of hate you're getting from people who don't understand how the fediverse works... if they think this is bad, should I tell them about Mostr? lol

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

Hey Shari, most bridged services I've used are transparent about the bridge existing. I'm apart of a community that bridges IRC, Matrix, and Discord. This is instantly transpatent regardless of protocol or platform. This is usually how I've seen them work in social communities.

A lot of folks like this space because it's insular and allows them to attempt to control their reach, additionally the culture in many spaces here is heavily consent based.

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in reply to Bennett

Do you genuinely believe that the main reason folks do not like this is because they don't understand what a bridge is? Same question applies to Apub/Masto. I suspect it's because folks here want to be asked if XYZ is fine or not, not because of a technical misunderstanding. Generally moderators help ensure the culture of consent is followed.

I feel you misunderstand where the folks you're replying to are coming from.

in reply to Bennett

@Bennett @Ryan Barrett @Ryan Barrett oh no, I fully understand all those points. What people are upset about is that their illusions are being taken away.

For one, bridge transparency: IRC and Discord are non-federated, so they don't even have bridges in the same sense, their bridges are only what we would call puppet accounts. Matrix bridges really come in two forms, one is puppet accounts and the other are bridges in the same sense as above... a prime example is aria-net.org which is an XMPP/Matrix bridge. Like above, no consent, no nothing, it's there and just works. If I want to contact you on one platform from the other I just have to know how to reformat your name to use the bridge and voila, no "consent" needed and no "opt-in". (You'll note how you generally don't see an option somewhere in Matrix or XMPP to sign up for a bridge between the two services, because you only need to sign up for puppet accounts)

and second: people are freaking out because they had assumptions and illusions about what the fediverse is and this threatens those assumptions and illusions, despite being something that's been understood to be the accepted norm here loooooong before they ever even heard about it.

Bridges pre-date even ActivityPub, and the behavior of bridges is well established. Again, people freaking out about this are people who didn't realize that this is part and parcel of what it means to federate. And if you're goal is to control your data, then you need to be joining a whitelist server because otherwise this isn't the place for that.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

Thank you, I appreciate the well thought out response. Clears up my thinking on the matter.
in reply to Bennett

But what is it that you think people should be asked about? I'm reading your post right now even though you didn't opt into federating with fietkau.social. The fediverse has an established culture of open federation, public messages can get passed between servers and shown publicly there until someone opts out.

And yes, from the GitHub comments I can 100% confirm that many complainants have zero idea what a bridge is. It's been called everything from a scraper to a piracy site.

@shiri

Unknown parent

Shiri Bailem

@seahorse @Formally Known As Bending Unit @Ryan Barrett pro-active statement that doesn't even knowledge of your network: bridges like this are passive, they appear and operate just the same as regular AP instances, only difference is that they're translating the requests on the other end to Bluesky and vice versa.

It's not live yet because it won't function until Bluesky federates, once they do it'll appear as a completely separate Bluesky instance in their network.

Bridges already exist for other networks as well, the only reason this is new is because Bluesky hasn't federated at all before.

As far as how to deal with it, if you don't want to see Bluesky accounts you can block the domain from your user account, or if an admin feels it's unacceptable they can block the domain server-wide. Both just like you can with a regular AP instance.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

My admin took care of it.

I do not consider a bridge to bluesky or anything owned by (edit: sorry, affiliated with) a scumbag like dorsey to be "passive." I consider it to be the first step to #enshittification.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to Ugly Bag of Mostly Water

@Formally Known As Bending Unit @Ryan Barrett @seahorse passive is a technical, not emotional term. Alternatively an "active" bridge would be akin to a webcrawler, actively pulling in posts whether or not they're requested.

That is also a wild misuse of enshittification. Enshittification is when a platform or product offers an explicit feature and upon achieving market dominance removes that feature.

This is simply someone using the existing features and design of ActivityPub in a way you dislike. This is not being provided by any of the platforms involved and is not something added or changed about the ActivityPub protocol.

This is as much enshittification as complaining about platforms other than Mastodon using ActivityPub.

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Unknown parent

Shiri Bailem
@Damon @Black Aziz Anansi :vm: I mean if they prefer opt-in they should look for or host a whitelist server... (many server platforms have a whitelist mode in which they only federate with explicitly whitelisted instances)

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Unknown parent

Shiri Bailem

@jeremiah @Ryan Barrett @Sara The entire fediverse is opt-out structure by default.

If you want opt-in I recommend moving to or setting up a whitelist instance (an instance configured to only federate with instances added to the whitelist, meaning all instances are opt-in by your admin).

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Unknown parent

Shiri Bailem

@L. Rhodes @Ryan Barrett on both sides the bridge would appear as a single instance, so you would not be able to selectively block servers on the other side of the bridge. If this becomes a problem you can easily block the whole bridge.

For more granular controls you would want a native plugin to your platform.

in reply to Shiri Bailem

could you block individual fediverse users from bluesky?

i'm not sure on fediverse if we currently can block individual users effectively anyway from this direction?

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

A question about your comment "Admins .... the domain to limit or block is bsky.brid.gy". Does this also work for individual users blocking the domain? If so, you might want to update your post to reflect that -- I've heard from several people that they don't think regular blocking will work with #BridgyFed

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in reply to Jon

@Jon @Ryan Barrett @Ryan Barrett User level block controls vary based on platform (ie. Mastodon, Lemmy, Friendica, etc). Regardless they should work mostly the same as server level controls.

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in reply to Jon


@jdp23 Great point, thank you. It does work for individual users too; I'll update the post.


A question about your comment "Admins .... the domain to limit or block is bsky.brid.gy". Does this also work for individual users blocking the domain? If so, you might want to update your post to reflect that -- I've heard from several people that they don't think regular blocking will work with #BridgyFed

@Jon
in reply to Golda

@Golda @L. Rhodes @Ryan Barrett It's really important to understand the language here, Bluesky once they federate is the fediverse even if it's not accessible from Mastodon. If you want to differentiate we're on ActivityPub (the protocol our instances are using to talk to eachother, though my instance supports multiple different protocols while Mastodon does not). This is not a Bluesky to Fediverse bridge, but a Bluesky Fediverse to ActivityPub Fediverse bridge.

On both sides you will be able to block individual users without issue, they'll still appear as individual users. The only limitation on blocking is site-wide blocks.

One of the things people miss is that Bluesky is intending to compete with Activitypub by releasing their own protocol. So eventually there will be other servers sharing on the Bluesky protocol and not just the one.

Once that happens, you will not be able to block individual Bluesky instances from ActivityPub and likewise Bluesky will not be able to block individual ActivityPub instances. They can block individual users or the whole bridge, nothing inbetween.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

mother fucker what an awful and hateful idea to make opt out, you're a terrible person

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in reply to FS9-BS "Bad Survivor"

@FS9-BS "Bad Survivor" @Ryan Barrett what a hateful comment to make when they're doing more than any of the other bridges.

Let alone an ignorant comment to complain about how your publicly federated posts are passed around... sounds like you just need to join a whitelist server.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

you wasted your time defining passive and active, I could not care any less.

The definition I understand for enshittification is: "the pattern of decreasing quality of online platforms that act as two-sided markets."

Using a little knowledge and just a little bit of basic reasoning, I expect bluesky to only decrease the quality (as in, enshittify) of the mastodon experience.

Thanks for being my reply guy today.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

I've actually been waiting and hoping for a legit, bidirectional bridge between the two so I don't have to log into so many damn things just to communicate with friends who didn't choose Masto when fleeing Twitter. It's fine, I'll treat it like just another instance.
Unknown parent

Golda
hm except "block" having the meaning of "they also can't see me" i think is much harder to enforce over the bridge

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in reply to Golda

I think it can work as long as the Bsky PDS is compliant with blocks, since blocks themselves can be bridged. The main difference is that third parties can see blocks too over there, iinm.

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Unknown parent

Qazm

Yeah.

Each PDS publishes its local users' block lists (and changes to that should be part of its outbound AT firehose), so the bridge can send blocks to Bsky. (edit: A PDS should also honour blocks when someone views a profile, which afaict bypasses some streaming aspects.) On the fedi side, it should notice them at least through authorised fetch, but there's probably some activity pushed for changes there too.

The main "issue" is that it's a push vs. pull and collation boundary, so the bridge must bookkeep this info locally and can't just translate volatile network requests on demand.

Edit: Well, that's single users blocks at least. Bsky's moderation lists can since recently also be subscribed to as blocklists. I assume that works similarly, but translating them across to AP would mean flattening them in an n*m operation.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to Ugly Bag of Mostly Water

@Formally Known As Bending Unit @Ryan Barrett I'm just calling out people for being assholes because OP is getting shit on for spending the extra effort to offer a respectful feature...

Thread is full of assholes who think it's impossible and unreasonable to just block an instance and that somehow it's a deep violation of the principles of the fediverse for it to federate, let alone federate by default.

"How dare bridges, a thing that's been around for every single federated platform throughout history, offer an opt-out function, a feature that few if any other bridges offer as the norm is for them to just connect and not care"

And again on the topic of enshittification... you share the whole definition but clearly only read half of it because you don't understand what a two-sided market is... and how this is not a two sided market...

To clarify: a two-sided market is a business with two different sides to it, in most cases with enshittification we're talking about users and advertisers, but it can also be something like a credit card company (cardholders and merchants). Enshittification does not happen between platforms, it happens within a platform that's acting as a two-sided market.

ActivityPub is not a market at all, the vast majority of AP instances are not two-sided markets (I haven't seen any as of yet, but I'm sure there's an ad driven one out there somewhere), the bridge is not a two-sided market, the only two-sided market in this conversation is Bluesky itself.

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

Oi, how about unwelcome assholes that feel the need to unwantedly splain things?

Hold this mute, since you don't take hints

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in reply to Qazm

An interesting aspect of blocks on Bsky is that they're non-destructive, so they don't actually cut follow-relationships (but essentially fully suspend them) and are pretty reversible. I think that's an implementation detail though and neither AT nor AP really prescribe this one way or another.

Non-destructive blocks are a bit nicer with shared blocklists, since that means less "spiky" computing and that block lists can't do as much damage if they become unreliable.

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Shiri Bailem

@james is actually afk @Ryan Barrett they're exploring it, and honestly I think it's a horrible idea, will just result in bridges that don't check for # nobridge to flourish over it.

If you want opt-in you really should just be on a whitelist server.

Unknown parent

Shiri Bailem

@Grrrr, Darth Moose Shark @Ryan Barrett it neither violates the GDPR (and if you think it does you either woefully misunderstand what a bridge is or what the GDPR covers), and as a privacy advocate... any privacy advocate that actually cares about their privacy rather than the vague concept of privacy would shrug at this.

You posted publicly and it's visible on another instance... that's all that's happening here.

I've noticed others below seem to think this is something like a web scraper or that it will do something invasive? A bridge just translates between protocols, once this is up it just means that bluesky users and activitypub users would be able to talk to eachother through this instance with it translating requests between the two (ie. user1@bluesky wants to follow user2@mastodon, they'd follow something like user2.mastodon@brid.gy; user2 will get a follow request from something like user1.bluesky@brid.gy; if they accept then they'll be sharing their posts between eachother)

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Shiri Bailem

@Don Ray @Ryan Barrett yet you decided the same for us with this comment?

If you take issue with how your public federated post is federated... then you should join a whitelist instance.

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Shiri Bailem

@jeremiah @Ryan Barrett @Sara ... this really is the same as another fediverse server.

A bridge translates between networks, and the typical format is something like user1@bluesky because user1.bluesky@brid.gy, likewise user2@ap turns into user2.ap@brid.gy. You block brid.gy and you've blocked all of it.

The only difference between a bridge and a bluesky instance being on the network is that you won't be able to block just a server on the other network, you have to block either the entire bridge or just one user at a time.

There are already tons of bridges on activitypub to other platforms (if you think Bluesky is bad, look up Nostr...).

Unknown parent

Shiri Bailem

@Cyrus (still a bit spooky tbh) @Jake @Ryan Barrett I get the feeling you think a bridge is a scraper...

Bluesky is about to start federating just under it's own protocol (their equivalent of ActivityPub which others will be able to host servers on the same as we can host servers on AP). A bridge translates between two protocols. Your content isn't getting scraped and uploaded to Bluesky.

A bridge just means that Bluesky users will show up to us like new users on this bridge. user1@bluesky will turn into something like user1.bluesky@brid.gy.

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

I think a lot of people think that Mastodon is the fediverse, and then freak out when they find out that it is actually connected to all of these other things too. I am guessing no one told them what federation is and how it works.

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in reply to Scott M. Stolz

This was my feeling when the Threads freakout happened last summer and it has been confirmed since yesterday.

A lot of Mastodon users don't understand the first thing about the Fediverse and federation.

And it's concerning when some of those people are Mastodon admins.

#Mastodon#Fediverse#Federation#Consent#Privacy#BlueSky#Threads

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

Just thinking out loud: I‘m not so sure about that. I think even „regular“ federation among Mastodon instances might be problematic in a GDPR context, no? If your instance is not using a whitelist-concept, but federates with everyone, there’s no way for the user to agree or be informed about all the servers which are processing your data.
Unknown parent

Qazm

The bridge can't really filter in this direction, since afaik AT firehose subscriptions and repository fetch are anonymous(-ish). Rather, it's Eta's PDS (and optionally feed algorithms on the way, but only as optimisation) that enforces the bridged block. Delta's instance should also stop sending posts to the bridge, as AP does not use a firehose, but only if there are no other (not-blocked) bridged Bsky followers.

A meaningful desync happens only when the block is rescinded: The bridge may have to automatically re-follow Delta as Eta to restore consistency, since I don't think you can 'remove a follower' on AT.

What happens with a follow in the other direction depends on whether there are separate block and unfollow activities generated by Mastodon. If yes, then no desync happens and Delta('s software) can choose whether they still follow Eta after the block is gone. If blocking does imply unfollowing in AP, then the bridge would have to translate AP blocks into AT block-and-unfollow.
Delta would then not follow Eta after the block is gone, unless Delta('s instance) re-follows Eta explicitly.

Maybe there's some inconsistency detection and cleanup scheme built into one or both of the protocols, too, in which case the bridge should make use of that where possible. I'm not aware of such a mechanism, though.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to Qazm

If the bridge forgets about the block somehow, then the follow may be restored on the AT side if Eta's PDS pulls Delta's AT repository from the bridge to refresh/catch up after a too-long firehose disconnect and doesn't see the block, yes.

The bridge can probe whether Delta blocks Eta over AP at least if Delta's instance requires Authorized Fetch, so when possible, it should probably do that at a low frequency to keep its records straight.

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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Unknown parent

JP

(Disculpe, estoy aprendiendo español!) ¿Quieres "bridge" a Bluesky con tecnologías de asistencia para invidentes? (¿Es esto “Tiflo”?)

(Excuse me, I’m learning Spanish!) you want to “bridge” with Bluesky with assistive technologies for the blind? (Is this “Tiflo”?)

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

You have this totally the wrong way round and are not respecting user privacy. If you're making big changes like this the default should be opted out, not opted in with a choice to opt out.
Don't be a dick like Facebook et.al do the right thing from the start.

Also we Europeans have stronger data protection laws and I suspect you're breaking them.

#respectuserprivacy
#GDPR

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in reply to Greg Walker :manjaro:

@Greg Walker :manjaro: @Ryan Barrett they're already doing the right thing from the start and exceeding expectations, offering any such feature is totally abnormal for a bridge.

Maybe you should consider whether you're doing the right thing by coming into the fediverse with assumptions that bridges should be opt-in when in the community they've always been automatic, opting out purely by blocking.

And in regards to the GDPR (A) nobody outside of a GDPR country cares (B) GDPR applies as much to bridges as it does to other instances, if it's illegal for the bridge to operate then it's also going to be illegal for multiple core AP functions to operate as well.

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Shiri Bailem

@james is actually afk honestly the reality is that anyone upset about this being opt-out is under false assumptions about what the fediverse is.

Having an option to even opt-out beyond blocking the instance is abnormal for bridges. If this makes people feel unsafe then their safety was an illusion in the first place.

Federated networks are open interoperable networks, long before AP even existed bridges like this have been set up between federated networks.

And kinda yes on what I said, if you make the conscientious one harder to use then that just means the awful ones flourish. It's a sociological thing, you can shoot yourself in the foot easily with safety and security measures... we do it all the time.

If you don't like it, you should block it. And as far as not knowing about bridges? There are countless bridges you don't know about, one way or the other you're going to be blocking them after the fact. The only alternative is to set up or join a whitelist server.

in reply to Ryan Barrett

I just came here to say that I support your work and I'm totally for building a bridge. The web should be free and so should the information in it.

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

I'm undecided about Bluesky, but I was undecided about Threads. My thing with Threads was, "I'm a single person instance (now a 2 person instance briefly a 3 person instance) so the damage done while I'm not around is minimal". Bluesky seems to be *trying* to be not a problem, but I'm not sure they will prove to be not a problem. Thanks for your work.

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

I’m looking forward to following #Bluesky accounts here. It seems like the other side has lots of knobs for twiddling opaque algorithms and all follows, but precious few for moderating what I see from the individual “knobs” I follow there.

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in reply to Ryan Barrett

This sounds great. Can't wait to follow #Bluesky accounts. Please go on with your original opt-out plan and don't listen to the sad haters on #Mastodon.

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in reply to F4GRX Sébastien

@F4GRX Sébastien @Ryan Barrett congratulations, you don't have to have anything to do with Bluesky. But bridges are a normal part of federation, if this feels threatening I strongly recommend you read up on how ActivityPub (the protocol used by Mastodon) works, how bridges work, and the history of bridges in the fediverse.

Odds are you'll never see any personal impact from this whatsoever unless you make friends with someone who's on Bluesky or share something that goes super viral (in which case you'll probably be thankful for this because you have zero control over screenshots, but through the bridge you'll still have access to blocking, deleting, and editing of posts)

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in reply to soc

@soc @Ryan Barrett I recommend then either blocking the bridge or selecting one of the options they provide to opt-out. Their # nobridge tag is thorough because it'll also opt you out of other bridges running their software, but if you don't like that you can just block their bridge's instance.

Be aware though that if you're on the fediverse and not on a whitelist instance, you will be bridged to all reasonably compatible federated networks.

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Shiri Bailem

@Tony Hoyle @Ryan Barrett @chronohart That's one of those things that applies equally to ActivityPub servers and bridges, the bridge doesn't change this situation, if Bluesky gets sued successfully over that then all of ActivityPub shuts down too.

Regardless, TOS isn't required, the counter argument as that you're explicitly sharing your posts to be publicly federated, shared, and reshared across servers.

TOS isn't about it being necessary to function at all, it's just "cover-your-ass" legal text to make things simpler (ie. rather than having to make arguments they can just point to a line in the TOS).

Unknown parent

Shiri Bailem
@Robur @aeris @Ryan Barrett you only need to check compliance if you're in a GDPR country (they are not), and GDPR's stance on this will be the exact same as on federation in general (as such if this is illegal than the entire fediverse is illegal to begin with)

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Unknown parent

Wow, thanks for the long explanation as well.

I would like to comment on some, but will need to do so in separate posts, as I have the 500k limit (which actually forces me to condense, which is not a bad thing ;).

First of all, thanks for the follows!

Before June 2023, I don't remember seing

@jamie @shiri @snarfed @PCOWandre @oliphant @luca @chronohart

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Unknown parent

"If you wish to prevent this you have to ensure that none of the people that follow you also doesn't follow someone on a service you don't like."

I would not even know how to go about this. In fact, I am not opposed to my content going to any real #Fediverse platform, i.e. that are not-for-profit/corporate.
My issue are #BigTech platforms because of the agenda they have (see earlier #intro for a brief summary.)

@jamie @shiri @snarfed @PCOWandre @oliphant @luca @chronohart

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Unknown parent

And, OFC, apart from this limitation, I want my "global" content to spread as widely as possible, as I think I oftent address global challenges.

@jamie @shiri @snarfed @PCOWandre @oliphant @luca @chronohart

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

Thing is that only the opposite is possible. Because standards are open anybody can join. When this bridge goes live, you might be followed by Friendica instances over the bridge because the AT Protocol is a true fediverse even if it was designed by a corporate entity and it's first server was a corporate server.

But once that goes live, they also have absolutely no control over it after that. They won't have control or access to your posts between two AT instances unless one of those is the original Bluesky itself.

And because protocols are open, there's nothing that can be done about that... without again limiting reach. Your only option to broadly exclude certain entities from the fediverse is to put the entire fediverse under a central control... but then you're at the whims of whomever controls it and we're back at the same problem as before with Twitter, Facebook, and the like...

@HistoPol @Jamie Booth @Oli @Luca Sironi @Andre @chronohart @Ryan Barrett @m@thias.hellqui.st

Unknown parent

"As for "Elmos paypal platform" (I would assume X?),

My bad, I wrongly attributed Dorsey to the #PayPalMafia due to his #Binance venture and their joint involvement in the #TwitterTakeover. I meant #BlueSky, OFC.

I'm not sure what you're going for here. It is correct that I can screenshot and/or direct link your public posts,..copy of your post, and post those on Twitter, ... That is how it always has worked."

Yes, I know.

@jamie @shiri @snarfed @PCOWandre @oliphant @luca @chronohart

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Unknown parent

"... it isn't something you as a *user *can "switch on", for you only, on .social, as that simply isn't how ActivityPub works."

I was afraid you'd say that ;) - makes sense (alas.)

@jamie @shiri @snarfed @PCOWandre @oliphant @luca @chronohart

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

Closest "user level" version of "whitelist mode" would be to require follow requests and only share to followers, never public.

From your descriptions, you really don't want whitelist mode either (you're basically defederating yourself and cutting off practically everyone).

The ideals you expressed, like I said elsewhere, are basically impossible to achieve. You have to pick your sacrifices... either you're posts federate to platforms you don't like... or your posts don't really federate at all.

@HistoPol @Jamie Booth @Oli @Luca Sironi @Andre @chronohart @Ryan Barrett @m@thias.hellqui.st

in reply to Shiri Bailem

Thanks for going to such great length in explaining all this to a non-techie. :)

I have some questions, though:
"When this bridge goes live, you might be followed by #Friendica instances over the bridge."

My understanding was, that all present platforms of the #Fediverse use the AcitivityPub protocoll and can thus federate and I know I do have followers from, say, Friendica instances. So, why the bridge for them?

@jamie @oliphant @luca @PCOWandre @m @chronohart @snarfed

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

(1/2)

"Your only option to broadly exclude certain entities from the fediverse is to put the entire fediverse under a central control... but then you're at the whims of whomever controls it and we're back at the same problem as before with Twitter, Facebook, and the like..."

Exactly, A no-go.
No, it must be exactly the opposite.
The internet was designed to withstand an attack from outside, so that...

@jamie @oliphant @luca @PCOWandre @m @chronohart @snarfed

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

(2/2)

...not the whole system might be destroyed.
As explained, our governments' agencies and military are engaged in a #HybridWar, including #CyberWarfare, so strategically speaking, the original concept of #decentralization must be maintained.

(If I remember correctly, the former #Mossad chief recently said that there was a 365/24 #CyberWarfare.)

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

Because if the user is primarily associating with the Bluesky community (ie. someone who left Bluesky for Friendica) that may be the first place they find you. They may also not be tech savvy enough (or just not care) to realize it's an AP account they can bypass the bridge to reach.

It was also to highlight that the moment Bluesky starts federating... they stop being the only ones on that protocol, many many Friendica instances are ready to immediately federate with Bluesky as soon as that happens.

Once the plugin updates, I know I'm one of them. There's a number of people who chose Bluesky over anything else that I'd look up and add to my follow list.

After that, some time later there will be AT only servers cropping up, basically AT's equivalent of Mastodon will appear. It'll eventually likely turn into it's own ecosystem with some people preferring one over the other for this or that feature (like some people may prefer the fact that AT has a proper verified user system as opposed to AP... which just has a weak hacked version)

@HistoPol @Jamie Booth @Oli @Luca Sironi @Andre @m@thias.hellqui.st @chronohart @Ryan Barrett

in reply to Shiri Bailem

Oh, my bad, it's late. I confused the "AP" and the "AT" protocoll. All clear now. AT is #BlueSky's new one. AP = ActivityPub = current #Fediverse standard.

So, but I might read this tomorow, if you chose to reply, how do we prevent this from happening to the #fediverse ?

mastodon.social/@HistoPol/1106…

@jamie @oliphant @luca @PCOWandre @m @chronohart @snarfed

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

A very clear statement. Thanks, Shiri.

In fact, I do share quite a bit of content to followers only.

However, I am using "Quiet Public," even more frequently, as to not bore my followers with special-interest convos.

I'd really like a combinaton of these two: followers-only AND "quiet public" for these reasons.

@jamie @oliphant @luca @PCOWandre @m @chronohart @snarfed

Unknown parent

(1/2)

I agree with what you say.

Let me add:
even now, the search has notched up from virtually non-existent to slightly above abysmal.
I limit the search of my handle to that handle. I'd have to switch accounts, search twice, and would never again be sure that I am in the correct account if I don't know when I had published the post I was searching for.

But even more importantly:
I have many friends whose ordinal domains...
@jamie @shiri @snarfed @PCOWandre @oliphant @luca @chronohart

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

(2/2)

...don't exist anymore. Some have even had to migrate up to 3 times b/c of that.

This is the primary reason why I chose the flagship domain: if it goes down, there will not be a #Fediverse to speak of anymore.

Please remember the lessons learned of the #XMPP downfall, triggered by the #BeEvilCompany, as convincingly portrayed by @ploum here:

mastodon.social/@HistoPol/1106…

//

@chronohart

This entry was edited (10 months ago)

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in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

I think that all of us on other services, many of who are older than Mastodon (which is about 50% of the Fediverse counted in instances/servers), would disagree. I think what you're after is that Mastodon wouldn't be around to speak of anymore (though many of my contacts who run their own Mastodon instances, and other instances, already have mastodon.social on block lists due to all the spam). But I get your point of view.

Food for thought: What I am honestly curious about though is this: how often are you referring back to Fediverse posts you made 1 month ago? 3 months? 6 months? 12 months? etc. Why? Can't you write it again? If the idea is solid it will sound quite similar every time you say it, no?

Also, what you said back then, does it still not apply? If it doesn't, why would you want it found as an eternal track record of something that is now incorrect? If it does, isn't it already part of what you post about regularly? The reason I'm asking is because post history was one of the main reasons people had problems letting go of Twitter/X, and I never understood it, despite having an Twitter account from the beginning. I happily deleted all my posts (40k or so) off Twitter before moving out.

I have moved 4-5 times in the Fediverse and not once have I brought my posts with me. Nor have I missed them. Perhaps I'm only posting shit, haha. :)

What I have collected over the years is the list of contacts that I wish to follow, and that is simple enough to bring along to whatever new service I wish to use. This obviously has been helped to a degree due to my overall strategy of publishing original (save-worthy, if the user is inclined) posts >> outside << my social network posts. I can link to them again, from any account on any service. I can make a new post with/of those articles. As I host my other platform myself too, and I own all the data, someone would have to go through a lot of trouble to silence me (I have 14 different Fediverse accounts right now).

So yeah, personally (and highly subjectively) I struggle somewhat to see how on earth the reasoning of using an inferior platform would yield me more benefits than drawbacks compared to using good platforms and link content between the different platforms, which also gives me resilience in where I choose to share my content.

But as I say, that is how I reason on these topics, and it probably isn't the same for everyone else.

@jamie @shiri @snarfed @PCOWandre @oliphant @luca @chronohart

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in reply to Shiri Bailem

We already are not only a big threat to their profit margins but a dangerous antipode of their whole model.

If I were them, I'd also try the embrace and destroy approach. Just like an anaconda.

@jamie @oliphant @luca @PCOWandre @m @chronohart @snarfed @ploum

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in reply to m@thias.hellqui.st :verified-skull:

Mathias, I have quite a bit to comment on your long food-for-thought (indeed!) post.
I need to go now. however, I have bookmarked it. It might be Monday.

As a teaser:
I refer to old posts on a daily basis, sometimes up to 15x.
I even have started curating them, e.g. using the same buzzwords (e.g. #Project2025 instead if #Project25 (ambiguous.) I amend hashtags that significantly improve my search. And I add limk references...

@jamie @shiri @snarfed @PCOWandre @oliphant @luca @chronohart

in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

(2/3)

...that I could not find or sometimes did not even exist when writing the post.
As with a thesis, topics develop over time (e.g. the climate crisis.)

I have been in the knowledge management "business" for a long time.

I try to inform and educate. You learn by repetition, working on, interacting about, and archiving for retrieval, among other things.

Also, I hate writing things a 2nd time. Improving them is another...
@jamie @shiri @snarfed @PCOWandre @oliphant @luca @chronohart

This entry was edited (10 months ago)
in reply to HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴

(3/3)

...my use-case us another matter.

One more thing today:

I"d be interested in your archiving method. To quote my IT friend, @mina : "I have to yet find a method to read my archived posts" (my words.)

Have a great weekend. I'll try 2 check back briefly sooner.
This has been a very insightful discussion.
I might need 2 change my security policy.
This might be the final year where open opposition is possible on this scale//

@Mina